Luke Davis | August 23rd, 2011

Insights arising from the atomic theory of matter

Insights arising from the atomic theory of matter

By Luke Kristopher Davis

(Last article)

The theory does not coincide with everyday experience

   Take a few seconds to look around your present environment; the laptop or PC in front of you, the grass or buildings outside your window, the objects that sit on your table and the body that is you. You can touch the table and it feels quite smooth. Nothing from this experience tells you that matter itself consists of small units called atoms. Objects seem intact and their surfaces seem whole… if they were made of small spherical units surely we would see them?  This is not true however.

Humans and their sensory equipment have evolved to deal with the environment around them, our eyes have merely coped with this layer of reality. Our brains find it easier to see objects as big solid objects, not made of tiny tiny particles.

It was in the age of the Athenian philosophers, including Democritus, that the concept of indivisible units of matter arose. The concept arose from the simple empirical fact that objects change; they decay, break, melt and evaporate. They simply asked the question; how can things change if they are completely whole? why doesn’t an object, when broken, simply vanish?  The answer to this was atomos: which is Greek for ‘indivisible’. Objects are comprised of very small spheres which are themselves impenetrable.

Many thinkers simply  disagreed with this absurd hypothesis for three reasons; 1) There was no obvious physical evidence for it  2) It went against everything already known (in those times conservatism was strong)  3)  It didn’t change how they lived.

In 1800′s John Dalton proposed an Atomic theory of matter, which basically stated that substances are made of atoms and that different substances are made of different atoms.  His theory was an explanation of many experiments from different scientists. His paper presented strong evidence for the atomic theory.

It seemed that primitive instinct had failed to reveal the truth about the world. Only precise experiments could detect the molecular structure of matter.

Our coarse senses have a limited power in revealing the structure of the universe, experiments that were invented beyond the atomic theory opened a new layer of the universe. They explained so much about where we live and how it works.

The Modern Atomic theory

   What Dalton proposed was mostly correct, however he did not present any insight into the structure of these so called atoms. He only said they were there, which at his time was a great achievement. It had taken many physicists and chemists since Dalton to delve deeper into the atom.

J.J.Thomson, through his experiments on Cathode rays, discovered the electron.  Which was later found to be a particle orbiting around the nucleus at different energy levels. This finding was partially due to a consequence of the experiments performed by Ernst Rutherford and his assistants (really it was performed by his assistants).  The experiment consisted of a gold foil with a detector of helium nuclei around the foil. The assistants fired helium nuclei at the gold foil and most of the helium nuclei past straight through the foil. There were however some unexpected results, some (a statistical value exists) of the nuclei were reflected back to the firer and some deflected their paths. This result was incredible as Rutherford himself explains:

It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you. On consideration, I realized that this scattering backward must be the result of a single collision, and when I made calculations I saw that it was impossible to get anything of that order of magnitude unless you took a system in which the greater part of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a minute nucleus. It was then that I had the idea of an atom with a minute massive center, carrying a charge.
—Ernest Rutherford
This disproved the plum-pudding model of the atom (everything existing in a sphere with no concentrated points). This experiment revealed the nature of the atom and this itself opened a new world.
Protons where thereby given there name, a particle existing in the nucleus with a positive charge. From this knowledge of the atom ,elements could be described accurately using atomic numbers (A) and proton numbers (Z).
This modern interpretation of atomic theory gave rise to a plethora of scientific knowledge and legacy. Nuclear fusion and fission arose after the creation of the atomic bomb made at Los Alamos. Radiation and the weak decay force could be described. The photoelectric effect, discovered by Einstein was born.
Delving deeper into the atomic world, now known as the subatomic world, has brought us invaluable knowledge. It has also brought us the modern life which we now live.
Interesting explanations
Einstein discovered what is called Brownian motion: the random jiggling of molecules in gas, liquid and solids (minimally). This led to an interesting explanation of what heat actually is. Most of us when we are young, think of heat as some kind of energy that hot things seem to possess and radiate. Heat is actually the amount of jiggling that occurs in a group of molecules. The more hotter something is the more jiggling its molecules experience.
The states and phenomena of H2O can be explained through this jiggling of atoms. Imagine a blob of water that is on your desk. It is stationary and it is sort of spherical. You may ask… what keeps this damn water blob … a blob!?  What stops it from just spilling everywhere?  The atoms of the water are vibrating slightly… in a random manner. The atoms are also attracting each other so that they stay sufficiently close to one another. The atoms that are on the outside are vibrating… not as much as the ones inside (as they lose kinetic energy colliding with air molecules and are not bombarded as much by other water atoms) but are trying to get in to the center of the blob. This is because they are attracted to other atoms inside the blob and next to it and this attractive force is much stronger than their forces due to motion. (As they come too close to one another they repel due to the strong nuclear force).  This is how a blob of water stays a blob… it is due to surface tension.
If there is not a thermal equilibrium between the air and the water blob, the blob may lose thermal energy. The atoms and molecules of the blob will jiggle and vibrate with less rapidness.  If they lose enough energy they may come to a point whereby the atoms form a structure in which the vibration cannot overcome. This is called a freezing point, we know this to be 0 degrees Celsius  for water. In the case of  ice, the atoms form an hexagonal structure with empty centers. These empty spaces create an expansion of the overall system causing water to expand when frozen.  In the case of water, the empty spaces are normally filled with vibrating atoms.
Also the burning sensation and the mark left on the skin by touching something hot can be explained through atoms and molecules. Say for example you have a hot pan, which we know has molecules vibrating and jiggling very fast. When we place our finger tip on the pan, these fast moving molecules come into contact with the cells on our skin and literally pound the hell out of them. The molecules damage the cells due to their momentum and surrounding cells produce a chemical which sends an electrical impulse to the spinal cord, which produces a signal to a motor neuron which then causes our finger tip to move away. (This reflex is sometimes unconscious).  All this happens in such a short amount of time, yet so much is happening. The universe is such an amazing system, such an intricate and complex system.

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Luke Davis | August 7th, 2011

A Facebook interview with: Nat Eguchi

The Facebook interview: Nat Eguchi

by Luke Kristopher Davis

    Louis and Nat Eguchi have had their Ipod application featured in the Banbury Guardian. I am curious about their success and how Nat has built up a curiosity for computer science.  We also discuss other issues that we find important in our lives.

(Luke is in Italics)

What do you think of your recent success on your app?

it’s just proof that a simple app, with very modest marketing can achieve world wide reach in very little time. this, admittedly, has also been proven by the apprentice, but with our success it shows that a little known company can have the same impact.

The App, as you imply, brings to the world a whole new enterprise for companies wanting a quick entry into the world of E-business. Do you think Apple has had a significant change on the internet and business? If so how?

Before the opening of Apples mobile application market place the “App Store”, mobile applications were very much few and far between, with a market place dominated solely by games and simple utilities such as currency converters. with the advent of the Apple iPhone, 3G mobile internet and larger screen sizes, mobile smartphones such as the iPhone have been able to have more feature rich applications with dynamic and stunning content. the Apple iPhone has forced mobile application developers to make functional, well designed applications for smart phones, with fewer bugs and better experiences. Apple has managed to do this by entering the market place with a feature rich set of tools, content and support for developers to create applications for their device. this kind of all in one approach has not yet been reached on platforms such as android. the audited, high quality nature of the App Store makes for a very high number of repeat purchases from consumers and this is the key business model that apple has hit.

Apple has indeed become a ‘tour de force’ in the computing and technology area. Their ‘all in one approach’ as you say and their dedication to design quality has resulted in them having more collected dollars then the U.S government.  Moving on from Apple and onto your own personal curiosity. Why do you create Apps and learn about the mechanics of computers?  When did you start this interest?

My interest in computers apparently started from a very early age, when i was 3 years old, my dad used to bring has laptop (more like a PC back then) back from work every day and he would let me type random garbage on it (usually pages of G’s and F’s). I would then format it and make it look all pretty and he would print off these pages of rubbish when he went back to work the next day, I think it was probably the excitement of getting these back the next day that really got me into computers from a very early age. As i grew up and progressed through primary school it became apparent to the teachers that I knew a lot more than them about the computers and they would often call on me to help with their lessons. It’s rather funny when i look back through all my old school reports they were so scared that I knew so much, I think they thought I was some sort of spy. It was at the end of the summer of 2008 that i got my first real break into the world of programming.. We (my brother and I) were commissioned to create a website for a rally team. It was decided that it was going to be visually stunning and needed a database for all the content. Not knowing anything about this I did what I usually do when I hit a problem and googled it. A couple of months later and I had learnt Actionscript 2, PHP, SQL and created a website. And that is where i really got into programming. It was earlier this summer that my brother came to me with the app idea for totty and asked me whether I could do it, I said “Come back in an hour and i’ll see” so he did and i’d built the majority of it. it was such a simple idea, that it was easy to execute. I think the nice thing about programming is that you can see the results of your hard work almost instantly and that is most satisfying

i am terrible with this!

That is very interesting, I did a lot of research (for the world’s greatest brains series… which is still going) on great mathematicians, scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs and Nobel laureates and I found that, in their childhood they had an emotional attachment to their subject area, or they were completely filled with awe with nature or their own ability. I am not saying with certainty that you’re going to be successful, I am merely saying you fit the already established pattern. This funnily enough happened to me when I was about 7, my grandad bought me a light bulb, he pointed out the window and said ‘the sun gives us light and so does a light bulb’ I was like… yeah.. it does, ‘ he then said how can light come from two different things’. That question which at first seems simple but has fundamental physical importance, unleashed a curiosity for the governing dynamics of things.

What are your other interests? Are you an advocate of science?

I have interests in D.I.Y and Electronics, I fix everything in our house and am currently trying to repair a 1970′s pen plotter, which is extremely difficult as it has thousands of wires, components and switches and it didn’t come with a manual! I am interested in the way things work and especially how existing online systems work, I have previously hacked SAM learning to make me the “Top Learner” in our year and also hacked spotify to be able to download any song. The other day I managed to create an exact copy of 4ODs ad-serving infrastructure so I could replace the adverts on 4oD with my own, it’s these little fun things that really interest me. using existing systems to do something they weren’t designed for.

Classic stuff! Teach me how to download anything on Spotify! (obviously outside the interview) Just a pre-warning though, the FBI and UN are cracking down on hackers e.g. lulzsec which could be classed as a threat to national security. However, I don’t think they are too bothered with 40d atm. You seem very practical minded with your approach to ‘finding things out’, which is brilliant! I tend (try and will continue to for the rest of my life) to find ‘existing systems’ in nature and to try and understand these and find ways to use these systems for pleasure or for the benefit of humans. It may seem dull to others, but, as you well know, finding things out is a kinda fun.

What do you think of obstacles that restrain curiosity and learning… parents and teachers can sometimes be restraining? Do you think Religion is a restraint on progress.. on finding things out?

I, Surprisingly, find very few obstacles to my curiosity bar time, money and the amount of time i can stay awake before my mind turns to a boiled egg. I have been blessed with fairly “Of the reigns” parents. Another nice thing about the things I do is that religion rarely falls into the lines of what I do, and if it did, i would have to take a thoroughly atheistic argument. I think that some fundamentalists can be stuck in the past about what they accept of science and technology (but then again, isn’t the past the definition of fundamentalism?). I am not worried about this in respect to the pace at which we are finding things out as many of the key nations leading the discovery of new things in science and technology have a very “Hands off” approach when it comes to religion and science, putting the two in very distinct boxes. I think that there is a way of having both coexist. but everyone is entitled to their own beliefs.

A very mature and respectful attitude you hold. On my ipod I have a weird facts app ( oh yes another app), one of the facts states that the rate of gain of knowledge is so fast that 90% of what we know in the next 50 years will be discovered in those 50 years. I am glad you are able to explore your curiosity with minimal limits. Just one more question which I will ask future interviewees too… 

what do you think of mattjwaller.com ?

It appears to be a very well written and edited blog, on par with a magazine for the quality of the articles. It’ll get you and matt far.

Thank you very much Nat! Let’s hope it does… we also hope you enjoy more success with your talents. Thank you for taking part in our first facebook interview, stay tuned for more! Adios Nat and readers!

I better get back to packing now!!

 


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Matt | July 21st, 2011

Are We Near The Pinnacle Of Digital Entertainment?

Over the last thirty or so years the world has experienced rather rapid innovation in electrical technology. One area which has seen dramatic improvements from this is the entertainment industry. Take, for example, the music industry which has seen it’s leading mediums move from vinyl to tape to CDs and then onto MP3 digital format. One issue I can see now though is that there is very limited scope from this point onwards. If you look at each of the preceding mediums to MP3 you can find faults and see scope for improvements. For example, vinyl was too big, had a very limited capacity and poor sound quality. Tapes suffered from all the same problems as vinyl but just to a lesser extent whereas CDs were only limited by their physical presence and relatively small capacity. But when you look at the MP3 format what can be improved without it still remaining as an MP3 file? If capacity is a problem then bigger hard drives are needed as the compression is unable to be improved sufficiently to reduce file size without a major loss in quality. There is no physical aspect so therefore this is not an issue with the medium and more with the players which I believe are already at the optimal size that anyone would require (Take a look at the new iPod Nano and the various iPod Shuffles). It is also of my belief that sound quality has reached it’s peak and any new improvements would be indistinguishable to the human ear and thus worthless. It is actually possible to represent the technological progress of musical delivery mediums on an economic PPF (production possibility frontier) diagram as shown below.

As the diagram shows, the progression between the various mediums has improved both capacity and sound quality at each stage. The fact that the MP3 point is directly on the PPF curve is significant as it means that neither sound quality or capacity can be improved without yielding a loss in the other variable and hence there is no room for further advancement without the actual PPF curve shifting something that is only possible through new technological advancements in this case. If the PPF were to shift outwards then it is likely that a new medium stiull won’t be created as it is possible that the MP3 format could just move and take up the excess space up to the new PPF curve. A possible shift in the PPF curve could be caused by the cloud revolution which could make the MP3 files theoretically volumeless and thus sound quality will only be limited by internet connection speed.

Another area at which we may have reached the pinnacle is that of the home television. There are two main variables which account for the improvements in the hardware side of televisions both of which cannot be seriously improved with any reasonable gain. The two variables are the resolution of the screen and the physical size of the television. The resolution of the screen has become insignificant for the average viewer as the HDTV revolution takes full hold. It has been observed that the human eye cannot tell the difference between 720p and 1080p from a distance of 6 feet on televisions of between 40 and 50 inches in size. This means that any further improvements in resolution will be futile as they will go unnoticed by anyone who isn’t sat extremely close to the television screen. In the case of television size it’s not really feasible for televisions to increase in size past their current standards as they will be to large for average rooms and will be a strain on people to see the full picture. A decrease in size is also not seen as an improvement by the general populous as bigger television have been consistently marketed as better by producers and hence a smaller television would be seen as commercial suicide.

It seems that producers new strategies for most forms of digital entertainment is to innovate horizontally by adding new features and gimmicks that enhance the experience without improving the overall quality of the product hardware. For example Apple bundles music in with a phone and other applications in it’s popular iPhone and several television producers have started releasing “Smart” TVs with internet capabilities. The advent of 3D television could also be seen as a horizontal innovation as most 3D televisions at present are not seen as much of an improvement over their 2D counterparts.

It would be ignorant to say for definite that technology won’t evolve any further but there are signs which point towards a change of tactics and a slowing down of innovation in the entertainment sector.


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Matt | July 18th, 2011

The Flaws In Tripadvisor Rankings

After over a month off from writing due to exams and holidays I am back.

It’s a common fact that many travellers rely on Tripadvisor.com as the Holy Grail for choosing hotels and attractions (e.g. restaurants). But are they informed properly? and do they always get the best value for money?

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, TripAdvisor is a leading travel review site which has a primary aim of collating as many traveller reviews as possible for every hotel or attraction in the world. This is geared towards building a detailed picture as to which places give people the best value for money and which are places to avoid. An example of TripAdvisor’s use is from my own personal experience today. I’m currently staying in a coastal part of Los Angeles and it was my plan today to visit the famous Venice Beach. While researching Venice Beach in TripAdvisor it was evident the the area was now actually more crime ridden and dirty than picturesque beach paradise and so consequently the plans were adjusted. Many people use TripAdvisor in a similar way to the example mentioned and so it comes as no surprise that hotels and areas can be completely ruined by a few bad reviews, irrespective of whether they are merited. On the flip side, small establishments can achieve worldwide fame through good reviews which would have been impossible without these types of site.

While in general it could be argued that the reviews on tripadvisor are incredibly accurate there are numerous discrepancies that could be of note when searching for a good hotel. One of these is that tripadvisor is essentially a weighted survey due to the fact that the people who register and review will generally be of a similar demographic (frequent travellers, adults). It could also be infered that it is mainly people of a middle income/budget that will get any use from this sort of site due to the fact that people with low budgets have such a limited number of choices and people with high budgets won’t be as worried about value for money as more expensive hotels become ostentatious (more in demand as they become more expensive due to people trying to flaunt their wealth and gain exclusivity). This last factor means that the following diagram can be inferred.

In the diagram above the number of reviews peaks at an optimum price per night. While this may not seem like an issue it does actually have an effect if you dig deeper into how the tripadvisor hotels are ranked. The algorithm which ranks the hotels focuses primarily on the average star rating that the hotel has from reviews. If 2 hotels have the same rating (e.g. They both have five stars) then the decider is the number of reviews that the hotel has as this is taken as an indicator that more people prefer it. Now if you apply this rule alongside the approximate distribution of reviews it is clear that hotels of a medium price bracket are likely to be favoured over those of a higher or lower price in situations where the average rating is the same. If this sort of distribution was extrapolated further then there will be cases where some hotels have no reviews at all and hence won’t get a ranking.

It could also be said that the average member of TripAdvisor is likely to be a family traveller and thus will possibly not approve of hotels and resorts which have a greater focus on couples or young adults providing a more raucous atmosphere. In some cases these hotels may not merit a bad rating but due to them not being family friendly they may not end up with a true representative score. Additionally it is also unlikely that this majority demographic is going to provide numerous reviews for attractions such as nightclubs.

It would make more sense for TripAdvisor to try and rank hotels in a personalised way for each user so that the users personal requirements are taken into account rather than just generalising to every demographic. If a user is a young male looking for a lads weekend in Prague then the system should give more precedence to other user’s reviews who have done the same thing.

Another major problem that is widely documented is that of fake positive reviews. As mentioned earlier, a TripAdvisor ranking can make or break your hotel or attraction and so therefore an incentive is created for people to cheat the system. There have been numerous reported situations in which hotels have been found to be writing their own reviews in order to show themselves in a better light, it is easy to spot these types of reviews due to the fact that the PR representatives who right them don’t seem to be so savvy in covering themselves up. They will nearly always have generic user names (e.g. Iloveholidayinn1) and most of the time have opposite sentiments to the rest of the reviews. This sort of action can also work the other way through fake negative reviews whereby hotel owners or representatives write fake reviews in order to lower the ranking of a competing hotel. I feel that both of these cases are serious enough to warrant an investigation from the office of fair trading (or equivalent) under the accusation of false advertising and anti competitive behaviour.

To summarise, I wouldn’t say that you shouldn’t use TripAdvisor at all when booking a holiday because it is an incredibly helpful tool which can help you weed out some very dodgy hotels. However I wouldn’t use it as the sole evidence for choosing one hotel or attraction over another without checking other sites or hotel reviews from a similar demographic to yourself. For those of us who are of a more youthful, lively demographic who are less likely to want a family friendly holiday in Amsterdam I find that one of the best places to take a look at is the popular student website studentroom.com.


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Luke Davis | July 17th, 2011

Nature and disorder: Chaos theory

Chaos

 

The clockwork Newtonian world recedes in the intellectual horizon. Its time at the frontiers of our science and intuition has come to an end, the gradual rise of a new science has already begun. The seemingly orderly universe which we encounter every second is more liberal than what we thought, instead of being completely predictable and deterministic  nature is unpredictable and chaotic.

Does this mean Newton’s laws of motion and all the work derived from them are useless? Shall we hammer out our linear intuition? The answer is simply no. Simplifying data by formulating linear relationships is still useful, it still governs most of our science and economics. We cannot immediately discard what has granted us so much power and delve into a uncertain and new mathematical world. Linear science, that is, simple linear and exponential mathematical equations predicting natural phenomena is still a good investment. It is still reaping returns. Though like a new idea or business chaos deserves an investment; as it succeeds and evolves its share on the scientific market will grow.

You’re still asking the question… what is chaos? Okay I will briefly introduce it, though the concept and formulation of chaos itself is still growing.

Chaos can be defined as sensitive dependence on initial conditions. This means that a system which could be within nature e.g. organisms resulting from small changes in DNA or the weather is greatly dependent on how it starts. If you or nature changes how a system starts or tweak a factor in its initial conditions, you will observe a great difference in the behaviors of the system and as time continues the difference becomes greater. In a lecture about his paper on the chaotic behavior of the weather: ‘Non-periodic flow’ Edward Lorenz named this sensitive dependence as the butterfly effect. The effects of the butterfly on the surrounding air albeit minuscule may cause a tornado on the other side of the globe. This sensitive dependence plus the nonlinear laws that govern a system make it a chaotic one.

 

 

Here we have two images, one represents a butterfly the other a lorenz attractor (a 3 dimensional graph with lines representing variables accross time). The Lorenz attractor is determined by the other picture, that is, the variables represented on the graph is determined by the butterfly effect. The system is sensitive to its initial conditions. The graph is chaotic, it may look predictable but the variables oscillate un-predictably over time.

So why do we need to use chaos when it is unpredictable? Surely it is not very useful? It may seem that way when chaos is over-simplified. Chaos is merely a non-linear science which forms relationships and laws of nature, economics and other systems from non linear geometry and equations of a special kind. New medical research into predicting heart attacks contains chaotic methods. The pace-maker cells, blood flow and cholesterol all at first glance seem to be periodic and simple, however as small changes in the cells or small environmental or diet changes may change the conditions of this biological system. Over time chaos may perform it’s role… what at first seems minuscule may become a momentous heart attack. Like the butterfly causing the tornado.

Non-linear science arises when linear science fails to adequately explain natural phenomena. As classical physics failed to explain the wave-duality of particles and the characteristics of spin, quantum mechanics was born. The genre of phenomena that non-linear attempts to explain what linear science couldn’t is ‘self organisation’.  Self organisation is where a system which is independent of external equipment or major forces behaves in patterns that are random. Linear science needs to know the forces acting on the system… but we don’t know it… the drive of the system is in the system itself. So we need to have a science that explains how certain systems can behave randomly in patterns by themselves.

Another important concept inherent in chaos is self similarity. This concept arose from one maverick genius…  Benoit Mandelbrot. Self-similarity is where a pattern repeats itself at smaller and smaller stages and doing so infinitely. The equation that governed this fractal pattern as he coined was… Z <> Z^2 + C.  The value of Z is continually used to create the pattern. A brilliant yet complex pattern has arose from a simple equation. Our linguistic and intuitive relationship between complexity and simplicity has been overturned. They are not distinct, they are interconnected.

A Mandelbrot set with beautiful geometry. Chaoticists argue that this fractal geometry is inherent in nature.

Chaos is an amazing mathematical discovery, it has applications in nearly every scientific discipline.

What wonders will it bring? Nobody knows. Scientific and mathematical discovery may itself be chaotic, dependent on its initial conditions. I do have intuition that the elegant mathematical butterfly of chaos may evoke an intellectual tornado, changing the landscape of knowledge forever.


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Matt | June 16th, 2011

“Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn”

“Some men aren’t looking for anything logical.
They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with.
Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s Butler

This is the first quote that came to mind, from the critically acclaimed movie “The Dark Knight”, as I read the maniacal ramblings of Twitter user “Lulzsec”. I urge readers to stop reading this article, open a new tab and go and read some of the posts on this Twitter account as I can guarantee you will be shocked.

Today there was a release of upwards of 62000 email addresses and passwords for accounts associated with such sites as Facebook, Gmail and Paypal. As you can imagine, the panic and pandemonium around these documents has been extraordinary. There are tweets flying around with photos of compromised Facebook accounts and emptied Paypal accounts causing the released documents to be downloaded thousands of times by concerned internet users checking to see if they need to take action.

Lulzsec claims to be a group “of lulzy individuals who feel the drabness of the cyber community is a burden on what matters: fun.”
Their website at http://lulzsecurity.com/ provides all viewers with leaked details and passwords of accounts all across the internet alongside details of top companies internet security networks.

The best analogy I can use to describe Lulzsec is that of an amoral Robin Hood. Lulzsec steals from everyone and gives to everyone, not that any of this anarchical nonsense seems to really benefit anyone except after the hacking of a number of pornographic websites when the email addresses and passwords of several US government officials (.gov emails) were retrieved to much shock and anger amongst the general public.

Lulzsec also claims responsibility for the recent compromise of the PSN network although that is yet to be confirmed. Similarities can be drawn to the ongoing scandal surrounding Wikileaks. In both cases the websites have released sensitive information to the public in an attempt to coerce a large corporation/organisation to bend to their will. Wikileaks released incriminating government documents in order to try and weed alleged corruption out of international politics. Now Lulzsec is hacking and releasing information about major firms in order to make sure these firms treat and protect customers in a more desirable manner. Or so they say.

Descriptions and posts on Lulzsec’s website and twitter account seem to contradict regularly on the motives for their numerous accounts. This could possibly be that Lulzsec is several different people all posting from the same account who have different motives for their so called “cyber pranks” or that the hypothetical PR wing of Lulzsec is trying to drum up public support from numerous sources in order to not always seem like the bad guy.

Whoever or whatever Lulzsec is, it is impossible to predict their next actions. Only a couple of days ago they redirected several thousand phone calls to the call centres of organisations such as the FBI effectively rendering the centres immobilised. It seems Lulzsec is a full incarnation of the persistently PO’ed people of the world who believe they are powerless to what they see as corrupt governments and evil corporations both fuelled by the prevalence of capitalism. This sort of thinking and publicity has given rise to the ideas of Socialism and Anarchism becoming supported on a wider scale than has ever been dreamed of since after the Cold War. Maybe it’s just the dire economic situation that it angering people but it seems some individuals have a very warped view of the world around them and a distorted sense of what is right and what is wrong. What this sort of thinking will lead to is impossible to predict but personally I hope it stays in the depths of the internet where it belongs.


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Matt | June 12th, 2011

Sunday High 5 : Smartphones To Look Out For In The Next Year

Welcome back to the Sunday High 5! This third edition of SH5 is focused the new developments of the one of the greatest technology product lines to appear in the last few years, Smartphones. It may surprise you to find out that the first Smartphone was released in 1993 with the IBM Simon which, amazingly, had a touch screen, email and fax capability and, a growing trend in modern smartphones, games. From this initial development smartphones didn’t really become widespread until the mid-2000s and their uptake has been majorly accelerated with the marvel that is the Apple iPhone.

In the next year of 2011/2012 smartphones will look to steal majority market share of the mobile phone market from what are now regarded as “dumbphones”. Here are my top 5 upcoming releases to look forward to:

Blackberry Curve Apollo

Set to be released in August, this new Blackberry looks set to come loaded with an 11mm thick form factor (just a bit larger than the iPhone 4), a 480×360 screen. While the Apollo is slightly less powerful than alot of smartphones being released by companies such as HTC and Motorola, the load of the Blackberry OS is a lot less than that of the Android software and so will be still very zippy and perfect for business usage. The camera is slightly disappointing at a measly 5MP with no HD mode and so won’t attract the high end market on this front. Overall the Curve Apollo will surely be great for entrants into the Blackberry/Smartphone market due to it’s physical keyboard and ease of use but will not attract the more technical smartphone enthusiast.


Motorola Droid 3

In stark contrast to the Apollo comes the Motorola Droid 3 which packs a 1080p HD video camera as it’s flagship feature. Providing a 4 inch screen with a 960×540 resolution alongside an advanced physical keyboard this phone caters to all needs and preferences in terms of usage. At the moment Motorola has not released details of the processor used but it will almost certainly be of the 1GHz and upwards variety and will be probably accompanied by 1Gb of RAM. This will mean that the Droid 3 will breeze through all apps you could possibly want and you could probably run several at the same time if you so wanted. One problem with this new release is that it isn’t compatible with the new LTE network coverage which means it isn’t very future proof.

Blackberry Torch 2

Another entry from Blackberry here has been chosen because of it’s snazzy new feature, NFC or Near Field Communications. This new form of communication allows compatible devices to be programmed to perform a whole new range of tasks with possible uses being instant payments, door unlocking and mobile ticketing for flights, trains and events. This means that your phone can eventually replace your entire wallet, keys and more so that you only have to carry one thing in your pocket. Other features of the Torch 2 include a 480×640 screen which is of a higher resolution than the other Blackberry phone on this list and a 1.2GHz processor. All this coupled with 8Gb of internal storage means that this phone could be a real powerhouse when released with many drawn to the NFC feature.

Motorola Photon

This phone is perfect for all those media buffs out there who just can’t live without watching videos on the move. The interesting feature of this phone is the intelligent kickstand that allows you to stand the phone up in landscape mode so that you can watch your favourite movies, TV shows and video clips without holding the phone. Also present are mini USB and mini HDMI ports which enable for data and video out connections. All this comes in addition to two cameras, one front facing and another 8MP camera on the back for high resolution photos. Motorola has also paid special attention to the form factor and ergonomics of the phone so that it is easy to hold and is as slim as possible.

iPhone 5

To be fair there was only ever one winner here. No other phone will be as anticipated this year and you can be sure that Apple will throw something new at us by the time 2011 ends. While the iPhone 5 has not been officially announced there are many sites predicting it’s features with a good amount of certainty. Possible features include: NFC (as in the Blackberry Torch 2), Dual Core Processor, improved graphics, increased storage and 4G compatibility. Alongside the already announced iOS5 and iCloud the iPhone 5 could be the most updated iPhone yet and steal even more market share than it already holds.

It does seem however that smartphones are not announced too early and so more be announced throughout the year that are not included on this list with some amazing innovations.


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Matt | June 9th, 2011

Is Wikipedia Really Unreliable?

We’re told all through our school and professional life that if we are going to use sources never to trust the holy grail that is Wikipedia. I can guarantee that if you type in virtually any noun into Google Wikipedia will have a link on the first page. I even typed in “Wikipedia Unreliable” earlier and Wikipedia was the first answer! So the question is why is it treated with such disdain by most people in professional bodies and yet is the largest source of useful information (Google is the largest source of information but half of it I wouldn’t regard as useful) ever known to man?

I could see there being a slight conspiracy in order to damage Wikipedia’s credibility. It may sound silly but it seems strange to me that anyone buys reference books such as Encyclopaedias any more. When we have such a large and varied resource as the internet, which I know I have moaned about in the past but there is no taking away it’s usefulness for information, why would anyone who has the internet possible need to buy this sort of book. Much in the same way that ebook readers such as the Kindle are destroying the paper book market the Internet should have eradicated reference books by now as it has been in public use for far longer and is available pretty much anywhere you go. My theory is that these sort of books carry a sort of elite status that means people receive extra utility (economic word of satisfaction for those who don’t know) just by owning them. It gives weight to the theory that the whole stigma of Wikipedia being unreliable was just cooked up by the producers and consumers of reference books to make themselves seem holier than thou.

A common argument used against Wikipedia is that anyone can edit or publish it’s pages. What they are forgetting, which is a really important point, is that the Wikipedia community is so large that it’s moderation team can effectively eradicate any typos within minutes of their occurrence. I tried a test on this by editing a Wikipedia page a while ago. I made a small change to one sentence that reversed it’s meaning and despite being very well disguised it was removed within 5 minutes.

I’m not saying that this moderation team is perfect. For instance in a Geography lesson a couple of years ago an article about Mount St. Helens on Wikipedia referred to it’s location in a very lurid way about someone called “Tom”. This, however, is one of only a handful of mistakes I’ve ever encountered and I have used Wikipedia for a good proportion of my qualitative school work. A more common occurrence is in the sports page where potential player transfers are added before they’ve happened leading to spiralling rumours across sites such as Twitter. I would go as far to say that the number of errors you could find on Wikipedia would only be slightly more than in books and newspapers if you took it on a word by word basis and so there seems no reason to think that Wikipedia cannot be used as a reliable source.

In some cases it could be more reliable due to it’s editability. If a book is published with an error ad sold around the world then that’s it, nothing can be done to change the error and an important reference tool is not incorrect. On the Internet however, mistakes can be corrected in an instant and therefore these sort of mistakes can be eradicated.

I’ve read today that some people pay up to $1165 for a full paper Oxford English Dictionary and up to $265 a year to view the online version. This is ridiculous when there are numerous online dictionaries that probably use the same database. The more you delve into the world of information the more elitist it seems to get.


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Matt | June 8th, 2011

Facebook Already Has Your Privacy, Get Over It

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

The above text is virtually the first line of Facebook’s terms and conditions which are shown to users while registering and can be viewed by clicking on a link at the bottom of the page. While I’m sure it’s not a very well known part of Facebook’s policy it has HUGE implications for all users of the social networking service. In layman’s terms it means that any content that you upload to Facebook effectively now belongs to Facebook. But it goes further than this. The sentence “you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook” is the most interesting as it highlights what Facebook is able to do with the data you give them.

The words “non-exclusive” and “transferable” are critical as they imply that Facebook is able to give or sell any data to a third party company, without permission, and to as many companies as it likes. “Royalty-free” is also a keyword as it means that you won’t get a penny if Facebook or third parties use the data for commercial purposes. So any photo that you upload, whether it be of family,friends or just scenery can be used by anyone Facebook decides to sell it to. Your face could be on a billboard on the other side of the world.

For one lucky person this situation became a reality. Here’s the blog post here.
After uploading family photos to Facebook she thought that only her friends had access to them but after a shocking conversation with a friend in the Czech Republic she found out that her and her family’s face was on a shop window near her Czech friend. The sad thing is that this isn’t an isolated case and with a quick Google search you can find many more examples of this sort of thing happening.

I have known these facts for while and so I am quite confused as to why people are so angry when Facebook rolls out features such a face auto-tagging as a recent example. It seems some people are uncomfortable with Facebook being able to recognise their face and storing their image data. If, however, they had read those terms and conditions when they registered then they would have realised that Facebook already has all this data and has been using it for a while.

Personally I am fine with Facebook having my data and using it. I don’t put anything on my profile that I wouldn’t want someone to see as most people I know have Facebook. My general rule of thumb is that if I wouldn’t shout something in the street then it’s not fit for Facebook and as far as picture sharing goes I am more than happy for Facebook to use my face on billboards all over globe. I’d take it as a compliment. It seems more and more that middle class Britain is obsessed with forcing seperate entities to take responsibility for different parts of their life. Recently we’ve had called for the government to help raise children (The sexualisation of children scandal, article here) and now they want Facebook to organise their privacy. People have to accept that they have choices on whether or not to partake in activities such a photo sharing and letting children watch adult programs and so it is their fault when things don’t go as they’d like.

(Edit 15/06/2011: The Owner of the blog post mentioned above has contacted me and informed me that the used picture was not taken from Facebook as originally though)


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