Cloudy visions of the future

Predicting the future can be difficult

Regular commentator Bill Thompson looks forward to cheap net access and cloud computing.

It's a good, safe time frame because if you're right then people may just remember your prediction when you remind them how clever you are, and if you're wrong it's very unlikely anyone will think to point it out.

Trying to anticipate significant developments for the coming year is a lot harder, perhaps because the tendency is to overestimate the impact of the few obvious trends and miss the slow-burn developments that are on the verge of going mainstream and changing the way we see the world.

For example, last year I wrote "we are building our lives around the network and the things it makes possible, and 2006 marks the year in which this became a sensible and indeed rather normal thing to do rather than something that marked you out as a geek".

While it's true that Facebook and other social network sites went mainstream, they are still not as widespread as the sometimes breathless coverage would make you think.

Wireless world

It's the same with my prediction about phones, when I argued that "we're going to see smartphones and mobile access finally come into their own, as the devices live up to the earlier promise and the networks finally realise that treating handsets as network nodes makes a lot more sense than acting like they are mobile phones with added data services".

This has started to happen, but it's going to take a long time before we're all surfing the wireless web from smart mobiles.

The iPhone has accelerated the process begun by Symbian, and the rollout of Google's Android and open source phones like OpenMoko may help, but it will be a few years before the devices are completely freed from reliance on the network.

Computing is not a simple service like electricity, and it's not clear that we can solve the administrative problems needed to have business-critical services hosted remotely.

One facet of mobile internet access may change quite fast, however.

Buying wifi by the hour in cafes or on trains is expensive and tedious, and the widespread availability of 3G data cards for laptops on fixed monthly rates could hasten the demise of the pay-per-use services.

It may force the operators to do more deals to offer free access like the one between The Cloud and McDonalds, and I wouldn't be surprised to see free wireless in Starbucks by the middle of the year.

At home we'll see faster broadband services being delivered over cable, and ADSL providers will try to keep up.

BT and the other telcos will complain loudly about not being able to afford the investment needed to upgrade the local loop between exchanges and homes, but if the government keeps its nerve and refuses them tax breaks I think we'll find that the money is there after all.

The potential revenue from fast broadband networks are just too great to pass on.

Network power

We'll also see better screens.

The multi-touch interface that Apple has built into the iPhone and the iPod Touch will be used on bigger devices, perhaps giving the tablet PC a new lease of life after years in which it has struggled to escape the taint of Microsoft's over-enthusiastic marketing.

And there will be more and better location-based services. The newest version of Google Maps for mobile does a pretty good job of figuring out where you are without GPS by using the cell network, and we may see this information used to tag photos and blog posts.

No doubt Facebook will seize the opportunity to offer an "I'm here" map-based addition to your profile, whether you want it or not.

Together these changes amount to more of the same, offering us easier, simpler, cheaper and faster access to the network.

But next year's real shift will be more subtle and have much greater long term impact.

At the moment most of the computing we do is local, and programs run on our laptops or desktops.

This is starting to change, and in 2008 we will see more and more processing moving away from the user and into large data centres which serve many different organisations.

Gradual shift

The change is described in Nick Carr's new book The Big Switch, where he argues that computing power is becoming a utility.

He believes that instead of owning our own processors we will soon be renting time on large systems run by the likes of Google and Amazon, not just for storing data but also for running code.

Computing could begin to be distributed like electricity

Carr sees strong parallels between the way electricity generation shifted from local generators in factories to a national grid providing voltage differences where they are needed and the move from local to central processing.

In the world Carr describes most processing takes place in "the cloud", and the computers we actually use will manage the interface and the communications, but do little of the real work.

It is a compelling vision, though not without its problems.

Computing is not a simple service like electricity, and it's not clear that we can solve the administrative problems needed to have business-critical services hosted remotely.

Moving everything onto the network may appeal in the rich countries of the industrialised world but offers little to rural India or sub-Saharan African countries.

And there are massive security and data management issues to be solved.

Even so, the potential benefits are too great to be ignored, and we're likely to see a range of services go live next year that will, if successful, take us closer to the cloud computing model.

It will not be an overnight shift, but when we look back in a decade or so I think we'll see 2008 as the year things started to change.

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Experiencing U2 in 3D

I'm still recovering from an unnerving experience; I was nearly hit by Adam Clayton's bass guitar as he swung the neck around, and then had to duck out of the way of Bono as he stepped towards me.

Serves me right for being on stage with U2. Not literally, but that's what it felt like, when I went to see the band's new film U2 3D at the Imax cinema in London.

As a sceptic I did not expect much, 3D has been tried before but always seemed a gimmick with little artistic or commercial potential.

But this film shows the exciting opportunities for the medium. It can create "space" in front of your eyes.

On arrival at the cinema we were handed large 3D specs which made us look like "Brains" from Thunderbirds.

And from industry's point of view, a 3D Imax film is the one product which is difficult to pirate.

Taking our seat we were confronted by the giant IMAX screen 20 metres high by 26 metres wide. As the film starts I was transported to U2's gig in Buenos Aires in March 2006, and I was not just watching it on a flat screen, but it felt like I was there amongst the tens of thousands of fans at River Plate Stadium.

You are closer to Bono than the mike stand. In his words he worried that the film would make him appear as a "40 foot lard arse".

It doesn't, but there are times when he's so close it is slightly unflattering.

Bono says the film is aimed at people such as students who cannot afford to buy the tickets for their concerts. That made me think about other business opportunities.

Virtual concert

From the fan's perspective you probably get a better view of the show from a 3D film, than in a seat in row Z at some wretched arena, where you are so far away from the performers they are the size of a thimble.

And from industry's point of view, a 3D Imax film is the one product which is difficult to pirate. I've yet to see an 80 foot cinema screen and 3D projector on offer at a dodgy car boot sale.

Oh, one other thing, the music's pretty good as well.

Can we fix it? Yes! Role of the insiders The week ahead

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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On the trail of Manhunt 2

Manhunt 2 is the most controversial video game in history. Banned last June by the British Board of Film Classification, it is at the centre of a legal row that is defining what is and what is not acceptable in video games. But what makes this game so objectionable?

In the US adult gamers have been able to buy and play Manhunt 2 since last year. But in the UK the game is not available for sale and developers Rockstar are not even legally able to share the game with journalists.

Copies of the game can be bought on eBay from US sellers. But in order to play it I had to visit the developer's London offices in person and be shown the US copy of the title.

The BBFC says its position is clear. When it was first banned in June last year, David Cooke, director of the BBFC, said: "Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone.

"There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game."

Developer Rockstar is no stranger to controversy - it faced criticism over last year's title Bully, mainly from a press which mis-understood the game and assumed the player took on the role of a bully. In actual fact, the player's role was to challenge the bullies.

But its highly successful Grand Theft Auto series has come in for regular criticism that the titles glorify crime, especially violence.

There are concerns about the whole tone of the game and what it may or may not do to people who play the game

Rockstar says its position is equally transparent: It says it makes games that are "well within the bounds established by other 18+ games".

Before playing the game I sat through two of the most violent films of recent years - Saw and its sequel.

Both films have 18 certificates and are blood-laden, gore-fests which feature torture, mutilation and strong violence throughout.

Manhunt 2 boasts a range of murder methods

Manhunt 2 is a similarly violent and blood-infused experience. The player takes on the role of Danny, who makes his escape from a mental institution leaving behind a trail of murdered guards and inmates.

The method of his killing is particularly gruesome - the player can stab, kick, beat, axe and even suffocate characters in the game.

There is also the option to make the deaths more spectacular - the longer a certain button is held, the more violent the ensuing death.

Death and murder is one of the principal elements of the game, along with basic puzzles.

After about two hours playing Manhunt 2, it is impossible to argue with the BBFC's assessment that the game is unremittingly bleak and callous.

The game is on sale in the US

But the violence is stylised - and not particularly real. The deaths play out as mini-scenes reminiscent of action in the current crop of horror movies that are doing so well at the box office, such as Hostel, Cabin Fever and the two titles I had watched.

And the amount of killing in the game is no greater than in any number of titles that have been released in the last 12 months - from Call of Duty 4 to Bioshock.

The game is currently in limbo. After the BBFC was told to issue the title with a certificate by its own Video Appeals Committee, the organisation sought and won a judicial review which forces the VAC to look again at the game.

The BBFC successful argued that the VAC had been guilty of "a very serious misdirection of law" on the question of harm.

The BBFC has been the UK's "censor" for more than 90 years but in the last 20 years it has asked for fewer and fewer cuts in films, reflecting both a modernised certification system and a more liberal attitude.

Last year it asked for cuts in just five films, compared with almost 60 in 1989. No figures are available for games but Manhunt 2 is certainly the most contested title in UK history.

As games become ever more photo-real and as developers start tackling ever more adult themes the BBFC could find itself at the centre of more disputes if it continues to be the body which classifies games in the UK.

The player controls Danny, who escapes from an asylum

There is a growing body of opinion calling for pan-European game classifications to replace national systems.

There is currently a voluntary system, called PEGI, which sits alongside BBFC ratings in the UK.

Dr Tanya Byron, who is conducting a review of video games and their impact on children, is believed to favour PEGI replacing the BBFC.

One game developer told BBC News that he believed the Manhunt 2 controversy was "the BBFC trying to prove it has teeth in an attempt to avoid being pushed out of the way in favour of PEGI".

Rockstar says it is committed to seeing Manhunt 2 released in the UK and one staff member said he was "quietly confident" the VAC would rule in its favour.

Critics of the classification system point out that the VAC is a panel chosen by the BBFC and it is unclear when the committee will meet to decide the game's fate. A spokeswoman for the BBFC said no date was in the diary.

She said: "Classification is not a science; it's a judgement based on guidelines.

"It went too far. There are concerns about the whole tone of the game and what it may or may not do to people who play the game.

"Our judgement is a line we have drawn at this game," said the spokeswoman.

"If the VAC do not find in our favour, then that line has to move," she added.

Gamers and the game industry are waiting to see what happens to that line.Can we fix it? Yes! Role of the insiders The week ahead

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Meeting the man behind Moore's Law

Dr Moore has now helped found several companies

In April 1965 a 36-year old electronics buff jotted down his thoughts on the future of the juvenile silicon chip industry.

Writing in a "throw-away" journal, Gordon Moore accurately imagined a future filled with mobile phones, home computers, and even intelligent cars.

But it was a much more prosaic prediction that has come to dominate his life and the industry that he helped found.

"I could see a change coming that the electronics were going to get significantly cheaper," says the co-founder of Intel, the largest maker of computer chips.

In the article in Electronics Magazine, he predicted that the number of transistors on a silicon chip would double every year for ten years.

He later revised the forecast to doubling every two years or so, as the initial breakneck speed of development and shrinkage waned. It was a prediction that became known as Moore's Law and it has helped drive the computer revolution over the last four decades.

Modest growth

At first glance it is not the kind of observation that would catapult a person to fame.

But the day I meet him, a now silver haired Dr Moore has just given a talk to a packed auditorium of people and he is surrounded by crowds of autograph hunters who were not even born when he made his off the cuff observations.

Moore's Law has become shorthand for the pace of technological change. It set a standard for the chip industry's phenomenal growth and has in turn underpinned the world's digital awakening.

"It was an exciting technology in the beginning. It had so much potential, we just had no idea how much potential," he says.

"When Intel was formed [in 1968] the total semiconductor industry was only a couple of billion dollars worldwide - today it is 300 billion."

And as the industry has delivered each successive generation of faster, smaller, cheaper chips, it has opened up rafts of new possibilities for silicon that have ultimately delivered the technologies he predicted more than 40 years ago.

Reflecting on his prophesies today, a retired and quietly-spoken Dr Moore is characteristically modest.

"When I went back and read that I was amazed that I predicted all of those things," he says.

But, as a young engineer, he was at least uniquely placed to make his key observation, having co-founded Fairchild Semiconductors, maker of the first commercial integrated circuit, or chip.

"I was directing a lab where we were trying to advance the technology and from my perspective I could see some of these things coming that weren't generally visible to the rest of the population," he says.

Force for change

At the time, computers were mainly used by the military and PCs were unheard of, he says.

"Computers were in glass rooms tended to by a core of monks that knew how to do the proper incantations."

But as the silicon chip industry took hold and computer makers learnt how to exploit the technology everything changed.

"Shortly after that the commercial market just completely dwarfed anything in the military," he says.

And what had originally been just a prediction by Dr Moore became a self-fulfilling prophesy.

"It has become a driving force for the industry," he says. "Competitors have realised that if they don't move at least that rate they are going to fall behind."

So far silicon producers have managed to keep on or ahead of the curve for more than four decades by continually shrinking the technology and packing more and more components inside a chip.

"It's a peculiar feature of this technology that by making things smaller everything gets better," says Dr Moore. "The transistors get faster, you can put more of a system on a chip."

But more importantly, and perhaps more curiously, the chips also become cheaper.

And this is the key point of his 1965 paper, he says. Moore's Law is an economic law and would probably have driven the industry regardless of whether or not he had made his prediction.

"I am not sure that having Moore's Law held up there as a yardstick increases the pressure [on chip manufacturers] because the need to remain competitive is so strong."

Chip future

As a result, the industry has grown "far beyond" what he could have imagined in 1965, he says.

Moore interview

"It is surprising that any of the things we predicted are still valid."

He is most impressed with the industry's inventiveness, he says, allowing it to overcome a series of seemingly insurmountable technical hurdles as it grew.

"The industry has succeeded in getting around all of the ones that have been thrown in front of it," he says. "It has been much more successful than I probably would have predicted."

But, Dr Moore says, the industry can only go on shrinking transistors for so long.

Eventually, the features will become so small that the atomic structure of the materials will be a limitation, possibly spelling the end of Moore's Law

So what does he think will happen in the next 40 years?

"I'm through with making predictions," he chuckles. "Get it right once and quit."

Return to text

Can we fix it? Yes! Role of the insiders The week ahead

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Facing the future Facebook style

Facebook has become so influential it is bound to create headlines

Regular commentator Bill Thompson ruminates on the inevitability of Facebook being in the news in 2008

It might just manage to avoid upsetting its users with new services such as Beacon, the misjudged advertising feature that told your friends about your purchases.

It might spot fake profiles of famous people, like the two Bilawal Bhutto entries that fooled both Facebook and some newspapers, and remove them before they get noticed.

And it could even avoid falling victim to one of the frauds that are likely to be perpetrated against users of all social network sites.

But even if Facebook is lucky it will still get a lot of coverage.

Because during 2007 it became the social site of choice for journalists, politicians, bloggers and others who see MySpace as for the kids and LinkedIn as too business-oriented for friends.

Face off with blogger

The spat has helped highlight the issue of data ownership and data portability, and may even lead to more careful consideration of who can do what with the information found around the internet.

It also means that when Facebook is directly involved in a story then it will be bigger than it may otherwise have been.

We saw this recently in the fuss over the site's treatment of Robert Scoble, one of the more significant technology bloggers and a former Microsoft employee and evangelist.

Scoble, who has complained that Facebook limits him to 'only' 5,000 online friends, used a program to read each name, e-mail address and date of birth and import them into another social service, Plaxo Pulse.

When you sign up for Facebook "you agree not to use the Service or the Site to harvest or collect e-mail addresses or other contact information of other users from the Service or the Site by electronic or other means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications".

Since Scoble was using an automated script to harvest addresses he was clearly breaking this condition, so Facebook suspended his account just as it would for any other user.

Data issues

However Scoble is an A-list blogger so when he wrote about his suspension it generated a storm of comment.

At first people were broadly on his side, criticising Facebook for acting as if it owned his network of contacts.

Others then weighed in, pointing out that the birth dates and e-mail addresses Scoble had taken didn't belong to him but to his Facebook friends, many of whom might not want to be imported into Plaxo without their consent.

Company and blogger have now made up, with Scoble having achieved his goal of enhancing his notoriety and outsider status by standing up for users right to have access to 'their' data - even when that data is personal information about other people.

And Facebook has backed away from another PR embarrassment, although not without some loss of face since it is unlikely that an unknown accountant from Basingstoke would have been allowed to return after such an egregious breach of the site's rules.

Blurring boundaries

The spat has helped highlight the issue of data ownership and data portability, and may even lead to more careful consideration of who can do what with the information found around the internet.

But it also shows how important Facebook has become as the focal point for any discussion of this type. It is our lightning conductor for many of the issues which are emerging as important in the new, online world, and that will ensure that it will be dragged into stories to make a point, even when it is not directly involved.

Of course the chances are that the site will also merit some coverage because of the way it grows.

In his list of technology predictions for 2008 noted computer scientist Ed Felten includes 'a Facebook application will cause a big privacy to-do', and he's not alone in this belief.

One reason for this is that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg comes from the generation that grew up with the network in their lives, for whom the boundaries between offline and online relationships have always been indeterminate and to some extent irrelevant.

Mark Zuckerberg, part of a new generation of networkers

Zuckerberg's instincts are those of the children who flock to MySpace, Bebo and YouTube, not those of the older users who are now using the tools his company has developed.

This culture clash is an interesting reversal of the old order, in which teenagers would grow into a world defined by their parents and have to learn how to assert their own desires and demands.

Adults going online for the first time are entering a world that has been shaped by the interests, desires and concerns of the younger generation, a world that does not operate according to the rules they have followed in real life.

It is hardly surprising that there are differences of opinion, or that the practices of the various social sites sometimes cause concern for parents, politicians or teachers.

It will be interesting to see whether some compromise can be achieved in the coming months and years, or whether the rapid rate of network development means that even Mark Zuckerberg will end the year complaining that the youngsters are just not behaving responsibly online.

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Finding the freedom to roam

Looking for wi-fi? With a 3G connection you might not have to

Regular columnist Bill Thompson is enjoying the new freedom offered by his laptop and 3G connection working together.

A sore tooth can sit for weeks just beneath the threshold of consciousness before you finally decide to do something about it, and you leave the dentist full of optimism, hope and love for all humanity now that you can think clearly.

Well, like a man who bangs his head against a brick wall because it feels so good to stop, I've finally given up grubbing around for open wireless connectivity on the move and invested in a 3G modem for my laptop.

No more will you find me wandering down dark alleyways in search of an elusive open network, or hoping that the train slows down long enough on the run into Stevenage station for me to pick up "Netgear", "default" or "belkin54g" long enough to download my e-mail.

I have to admit that this change of heart has not come about because such activity might be illegal, since I firmly believe that simply joining an open network should not be considered a crime.

The law has clearly not kept match with the capabilities of the technology especially since many people leave their networks open in order to offer a service to passers-by.

Since I have my laptop with me nearly all the time I don't need to compromise on a small screen or inadequate keypad

And an iPhone or iPod Touch will automatically connect to "known" networks, so if my home network is called "default" I'll join any other open "default" network as I walk the streets.

So I'm confident that a well-constructed defence would establish that the previous convictions under the Communications Act were not justified.

But now I won't even be tempted to latch on to other people's wireless, because I have a little white box, called a dongle, that plugs into a USB port on my laptop and can connect to the phone network.

It works on the train, it works in my favourite (wi-fi-less) cafes in Cambridge and it works in my car sitting by the side of a B-road trying to figure out where I am on Google Maps.

I've been able to get my e-mail and surf the web on my phone for ages, but it has always been a second-best solution, and I'm unwilling to shell out for an iPhone even if the user interface does solve many of the problems I've had with small screens.

But since I have my laptop with me nearly all the time I don't need to compromise on a small screen or inadequate keypad.

New generation

The toothache has been sorted. The ringing in my ears has stopped. I can breathe freely and that sharp pain whenever I bend over sideways has finally cleared up. I can be online whenever and wherever I want to be, and life is good.

The new generation of data modems are already being sold as an alternative to slow broadband for home PCs when ADSL over copper wires is either not feasible or just unreliable.

And it can't be long before someone realises that the external dongle isn't really needed, and offers a laptop with a built-in 3G modem and a slot for a SIM card.

It isn't a perfect service, as I found out last weekend when I tried to stream video from the re-opening of Wysing Arts Centre in the middle of the Cambridgeshire countryside.

You really need a 3G connection for anything at all substantial, and when the connection falls back onto the old GSM/GPRS network it can cope with e-mail but little else.

But it is a viable alternative to wi-fi in cities. As well as being a lot cheaper it lets you move around without dropping the connection because it uses the cellular network.

I can also see how these 3G services could be used in countries without an established telecommunications infrastructure.

Many cybercafes in African countries already use a cellular phone to provide access to the internet, but these dongles could improve the speed and quality of service without needing several phone handsets.

When I first got an always-on internet connection from home I couldn't believe how liberating it was.

This was in the days before home broadband and involved rather a lot of complex fiddling to get SSH tunnelling going over a pair of Centrex lines into a small Linux box on my desk, and if that means anything to you then you've been in this business too long.

Now I'm finding the same sense of freedom comes from having easy, fixed-price access on the move.

Instead of deciding whether to shell out 5 for an hour's access in the railway station or risk the quality of coffee in a well-known fast-food chain just to get free access I can plug in and go.

Once again, the technology has demonstrated its ability to surprise me, and yet again I realise that we are only at the beginning of the transformation which began with the early networks of the 1960s.

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Locking down open computing

DTrace was made available for the new version of Mac OS X

How open should computers be, asks regular columnist Bill Thompson.

These tools would look at my thousands of lines of code and check that I had all my brackets and semi-colons in the right place and that I hadn't mis-spelled the names of variables or functions.

I also relied on more serious debugging software, programs like 'dbx' that could investigate the inner workings of other programs, monitoring them as they ran and giving me complete access to the instructions I was executing and the data structures they were manipulating.

Tracing running programs in this way is hard and detailed work, but it is often the only way to spot subtle errors, and a lot of work has gone into improving such tools in the years since I was working on sixteen-user UNIX systems with a generous 512Mb of RAM.

One of the best tracing programs around is DTrace, developed by Sun Microsystems for use on its Solaris operating system.

DTrace is available under an open source license, and when Apple announced that it would be available on Leopard, the new version of Mac OS X, every serious Mac OS programmer looked forward to having a new, powerful tool to work with.

Unfortunately early experiments with the Apple version of DTrace identified some unusual behaviour.

Cable ties

Adam Leventhal, one of its original developers, found that he could not see any information about iTunes, apparently because Apple had modified his tool to ignore some of its own programs.

Leventhal is rather annoyed about this, because the point of a trace program is that it can see everything in order to help developers find and fix errors.

Digital rights management is not, in itself, an objectionable technology

Apple has not made any comment on his findings, but the general consensus is that iTunes is being shielded to protect details about how it implements FairPlay, the digital rights management system that Apple uses to limit the uses of music and video files downloaded from their online store.

And Apple is probably doing this because it has been told to by the content industries, the companies that package and sell the products of other people's creativity.

This would not be too surprising, and Apple is certainly no worse than other companies in limiting what users and developers can see and do.

Microsoft makes it almost impossible to get inside its Xbox 360 games console, resulting in the absurdity of having to get a special cable if you want to transfer your information to a new console when you upgrade. It also doesn't open the console up to developers.

Modifying DTrace is also perfectly legitimate, if irritating.

'protected content'

Apple is perfectly entitled to change software in any way it wants within the law, even if it does reveal yet again just how much power the record companies have over the computing industry.

Vista also contains technology aimed at protecting content

The inner workings of a complex debugging tool may seem like the sort of issue that only affects programmers, but it has a direct impact on every Mac user since it makes it harder to find and fix problems in software, especially software written by independent developers.

Like many Mac users, I rely on a range of free and open source tools like the Acorn image editor or the twhirl twitter client, so I have a direct interest in ensuring that the programmers behind them have proper access to the internals of the operating system.

And it also shows the sort of issues that can arise when any part of a complex computing environment is restricted in order to satisfy requirements that have nothing to do with effective operation and are solely motivated by a desire to limit what users can do.

It's the same with Microsoft Vista, where vast efforts have been made to ensure that "protected content" like high-definition video doesn't leak out of the controlled environment.

This has an effect on system performance and on hardware compatibility that can seriously affect the user experience.

Picture record

The restrictions are not really a serious problem.

Landon Fuller has already posted details of a workaround, although there is no sign yet of Apple responding to Leventhal's point that "Apple has done a service by porting DTrace, but let's convince them to go one step further and port it properly".

The Mukurtu project uses DRM effectively

And digital rights management is not, in itself, an objectionable technology.

Encrypting e-mail so that they can only be read by the intended recipient is a way of managing the readership of a document, and a vital one for anyone wanting to use the public internet for private communications.

It is also useful in helping groups of people keep control and ownership of material that is important to them for non-commercial reasons.

For example an Australian Warumungu community has created a digital archive that uses DRM to enforce rules that they consider vitally important when dealing with photographs, because only elders can look at sacred objects, while images of dead people should not be viewed and other objects may be restricted by family or gender.

The Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari archive uses DRM to help the community manage these rules, although it also allows individuals to decide to vary or even break them, recognising that the technology should be at the service of its users and not the other way around.

It is a lesson that the record industry seems slowly to be learning, as more and more online services offer unlocked MP3s to download.

Perhaps Apple will eventually free DTrace from its restrictions, just as Steve Jobs has worked to get rid of DRM on music.

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Are the watchers being watched?

Not even MPs are exempt from the surveillance state they have created, notes regular columnist Bill Thompson.

Two conversations between Tooting MP Sadiq Khan and his constituent and childhood friend Babar Ahmad were apparently recorded in the prison where Mr Ahmad is being held.

He is on remand while awaiting deportation to the United States on charges relating to his support for terrorism. Mr Ahmad faces no charges in the UK.

The real problem for MPs, of course, is not that they will be specifically targetted for surveillance but that they will inevitably be caught up in operations against other people.

This doesn't seem to be the case here, as special arrangements were made to seat the two men at a "talking table" in the prison visiting area, but many MPs must have found themselves chatting to someone who was being constantly watched.

Perhaps it's time to teach our elected representatives how to use the latest encryption and anonymising tools so that they can protect themselves from the surveillance state they have created?

Just as few of us believe that employers really do stop reading employee e-mails when they realise that they are personal, although that is what the law would require, it is hard to imagine that the secret service turn off their microphones when an MP enters the room.

The problem is not, however, restricted to specially installed listening devices, and MPs concerned about bugs might want to look again at the laws which control how online communications of all kinds are monitored, stored and analysed, since this affects them as much as it affects the rest of us.

Phone companies and internet service providers keep records of all text messages, phone calls, e-mails, IP addresses, websites visited, and times logged on to instant messaging services, collectively known as "traffic data".

The content of e-mails and chats or details of web searches are not stored, so it takes a warrant to read someone's e-mail, monitor their online chats or install bugging software on their laptop so you can listen in to their Skype conversations.

But the information that is retained is enough to know who you are calling or e-mailing, when you're chatting and which websites you are visiting, the sort of thing that most of us would consider private and expect to be kept confidential.

The immunity for MPs dates from the days of Labour PM Harold Wilson

According to the Interception of Communications Commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy over 250,000 requests for access to this data were made in the first nine months of 2007, an appalling extension of the state's powers of surveillance, and one that few of us are aware of.

And nearly 800 separate bodies can ask to see some or all of it.

Apart from the police and secret services the Food Standards Agency, health service trusts and even the Post Office can ask to see who you've been exchanging e-mails with.

The information gathered will inevitably include details of correspondence between MPs and their constituents, lists of websites visited from MPs offices and home computers and details of which instant messaging services they have been accessing.

Currently net service firms retain data for about six months

At least it puts them in the same bag as the rest of us. Journalists don't even have the fig-leaf of protection against being watched that MPs have claimed for themselves, and I tell every one of my students at City University to assume that all of their e-mails, phone calls and online chats could be read by the authorities.

Most of the time, of course, what we're doing is not of sufficient interest to justify the effort of monitoring a journalist - or even an MP - but being aware of the possibility is vitally important in case a story suddenly becomes high-profile. The same would apply if a constituent becomes "of interest" to the authorities.

MPs might be unhappy to find out that their supposedly confidential chats to constituents are being listened in to by MI5, but surely they should be just as worried that the Food Standards Agency can find out that the owner of the dodgy takeaway in the local high street has been sending them e-mails?

Perhaps it's time to teach our elected representatives how to use the latest encryption and anonymising tools so that they can protect themselves from the surveillance state they have created?

Or perhaps they would like to do us all a service and dismantle it.

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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India's greener IT revolution

Indian children are getting online in much greater numbers

The man who helped mastermind India's "green revolution" in agriculture in the 1960s is now hoping to do a similar thing for information technology in the country.

MS Swaminathan was one of the key figures in the plan to make India nearly self-sufficient in food through technology which allowed for intensive farming techniques.

And he is now behind efforts to get India's rural poor online as quickly possible - through mobile phones, information kiosks and even resource centres, connected through the satellites of the Indian Space Research organisation.

He told BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme how he is now pioneering efforts to connect as many of the country's population as possible to the internet so that they can be part of a new "knowledge revolution."

"I always said the green revolution helped increase the productivity of wheat and rice and so on - but the knowledge revolution which we have launched increases productivity in all its dimensions," he said.

Cutting bureaucracy

Mr Swaminathan said that the information-centred approach is India's "evergreen revolution" - a perpetual increase in productivity without ecological harm.

He said there is currently a very big gap between "scientific know-how" and "free-level do-how"; one that can only be bridged by IT techniques.

Farming was revolutionised through hybrid grain seeds

He explained that crucially, India's typically tight bureaucracy had in fact been comparatively untroubling.

"Fortunately, in our own work, bureaucracy is not involved," he said.

"In the whole IT sector in India, the reason there was explosive growth was because bureaucracy had very little role.

"The same thing happened in the green revolution - the farmers who did the trick in the 60s - we just gave them the seeds and the technology and they went on.

"Similarly, IT is one area where there is a lot of creative work; there are a lot of systems of empowerment for people. But we can only show the way - the government will have to do the scaling up."

He also stressed that Said it will be even more significant.

"It will be even more important, because it can impinge on every aspect of human life," he said.

"Health, HIV-Aids, tuberculosis, and even deficiencies in diet. Many of these problems can only be eradicated by education, knowledge, empowerment - the dynamic information at the right time and the right place."Can we fix it? Yes! Role of the insiders The week ahead

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Why 3D is about to break through

Step by step 3D studio tour For a long time 3D movies and TV shows have been a bit of a gimmick. They have been used to re-energise a tired franchise, help a film stand out at a crowded box office or to give TV viewers a glimpse of what the future might hold.

But many in the 3D production industry now say that future may be closer than ever before.

Film makers, technology companies and post-production outfits recently gathered at the historic Shepperton Studios to assess just how far 3D has come and where it goes next.

The 3D technology gathering favour is based around stereoscopic projection. As its name implies this involves projecting two images.

The viewer wears spectacles that ensure one image goes to each eye and lets the brain piece the two together to give the sense of solidity.Catch and release

"3D has always been seen as complicated because you had technical issues during acquisition, post-production and distribution," said Mark Horton from Quantel - a maker of digital editing equipment.

"Now we have digital acquisition and digital distribution and digital projection systems a lot of those problems have gone away," he said.

Film industry's views

"You could not see stereo effects when you were shooting," he said. "Now you can see what you are doing while you are doing it and that's a big step forward."

Phil Streather, a film maker who created the 3D Imax movie Bugs!, said: "It was hard to make it good but it is getting easier."

"Where the tools are getting really sophisticated now is in the level of control between the two cameras," he said.

Stereoscopic 3D works using two lenses set the same distance apart as human eyes - about 6.3cm.

"You've got interaction controls or intra-ocular controls and convergence controls dynamically in the same shot," he said. "That's what you need to do for sports or concert work or any of that live action stuff."

Axis Films, which hosted the day at Shepperton, said it was now possible to shoot stereoscopic 3D footage with everything from minicams up to high end movie cameras.

Paul Carter, boss of Axis Films, said digital production systems had made it much cheaper to shoot in 3D.

Before now, he said, filming a movie in 3D involved hiring specialist staff and equipment which could add thousands of dollars per day to a shoot.

"With digital there's only a 20-30% cost difference on the whole process and that's making a lot of people shooting 2D consider giving it a go," he said.

"3D is starting to get rid of the image that it's a dark art," he said.Cutting crew

Axis has set up one of the first dedicated 3D editing suites in Europe in response to the amount of work now being done in 3D.

Editing stereoscopic images presents particular problems because of the need to keep the two images synchronised.

Care must be taken to ensure that the sequence of images matches and that one is not a different colour, lags a frame behind or has an artefact, such as dirt or lens flare, that the other lacks.

"If you leave errors in your brain will try to correct them and that's not going to be a very comfortable programme or film to watch," said Mr Horton from Quantel.

3D projectors cast two images that must be viewed through filters

Digital projectors do a much better job of handling the high frame rates (144 frames per second) demanded by 3D that can preserve the details of a scene.

"Previous eras of 3D were associated with bad colour and headaches," she said.

The number of cinema screens worldwide capable of showing 3D movies has grown from 98 in 2005 to more than 1,300 at the end of 2007 and is predicted to pass 3,000 by the end of 2008, said Ms Jones.

However, she added, older cinemas keen to convert may have to install a silvered screen that does a better job of reflecting the polarised light used to separate images.

This growth reflected a growing interest in 3D by movie studios, said Ms Jones. More and more high profile films, such as Beowulf, were being produced in 3D.

Disney has a strong interest in 3D and DreamWorks has committed to producing all its movies in 3D from 2009.

"It's helping to give people a reason to go back to the cinema," she said.

However, she added, many movie studios made the bulk of their profits from the sale of ancillary material such as DVDs - something that could be hit by the growing interest in 3D given the small number of TVs in homes capable of showing these images.

But this too is changing. Already, said Mr Horton, stereoscopic TVs are available from Samsung, Mitsubishi and Philips. There have also been stereoscopic broadcasts in Japan with more due to follow in China and Korea. An entire stereoscopic channel is being produced for footage shot at the Olympic games in Beijing.

It looks like the future of 3D is firming up.Can we fix it? Yes! Role of the insiders The week ahead

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Smart tags hail the web of things

Tags are helping monitor health and safety on building sites

The humble radio tag is growing up.

So say researchers and developers who are finding ways to make the tiny devices much more than just a hi-tech price tag that can help shops and supermarkets track cans of beans from warehouse to store shelf.

"It all started with simple radio tags and asset tracking," said Gerd Kortuem, "but that really only gives you an identifier for an object."

Now, said Dr Kortuem, tiny Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags are getting smarter and more communicative as bigger memory, basic processing power and wireless technologies are added to them.

"We are trying to embed a little more intelligence beyond location by adding sensors and by networking these objects together," he said.Safe and sound

Dr Kortuem and colleagues at the University of Lancaster are working on a project that combines smart tags and personal identifiers to keep an eye on people working on construction sites using heavy machine tools.

"It's to keep track of how long they are used, to figure out vibrations generated by these tools," he said. "It's for health and safety. We create personalised health and safety records for every worker."

The future of the internet is an internet of connected objects

Workers will also be able to look at their own health records to get a sense of their exposure to potentially harmful working environments and raise awareness of the dangers.

For instance, prolonged exposure to vibrations from drills and other tools can lead to a condition called "vibration white finger" that can leave extremities numb and painful.

Many hardware makers, such as router maker Cisco, are also starting to put smarter tags on devices so they can keep a record of their working life and can call for help if they are about to fail or are in need of servicing.Smarter homes

In the home too some gadgets are starting to use RFID tags to become smarter and help their owners cope with the pace of modern life.

The latest version of the Nabaztag wi-fi rabbit gadget has been fitted with a sensor that can interrogate the radio tags.

The rabbit can also read out e-mails, monitor RSS feeds and the weather for its owners. Rival devices such as the Chumby and Tux droid perform similar functions.

The rabbit can recognise lots of different objects

Jean-Francois Kitten, a spokesman for Violet, said at first only five titles, some stories and some educational, would have tags but more were expected soon.

When a tagged book is waved under the Nabaztag's nose it pulls a recording of a story being read from the net and begins to play it. Moving the rabbit's ears lets listeners skip forward or back in the text.

The rabbit also remembers where it reached in the book so, in the case of a story, it can pick up at the right place in the action when listeners want to continue.

"In the average house you have about 10,000 different objects and right now you have maybe three objects connected to the net - phone, computer and perhaps a rabbit," he said.

"But we think that more and more objects are going to be connected," said Mr Kitten.

Mr Kitten said putting tags on books had huge potential. For instance, he said, a tagged book could become a key to future content if a novel was made in to a film or game. When the rabbit read the tag its owner would get the chance to watch the movie online or download a game.

"It's a pedagogical way to explain what you can do with RFID and interactive objects," he said.

Violet also had plans to sell RFID stamps, or ztamps, that can be stuck on any object which can then be associated with almost any net content. When they go on sale three ztamps will cost 1 (1.34 euros).

Nabaztag owners will be able to customise what happens when a tagged object is waved under the nose of their wi-fi rabbit.

"The future of the internet is an internet of connected objects," he said.Can we fix it? Yes! Role of the insiders The week ahead

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Why Americans are shunning e-voting

Some people have found e-voting confusing and complicated

The BBC World Service's technology programme, Digital Planet has been looking at how many US states are going back to traditional voting methods after serious problems with electronic voting machines.

It has been dubbed "Super Duper Tuesday" - and as the votes of millions of Americans for their choice of who should run in the presidential elections in November are counted, it looks like much of the adding up will be done manually.

State authorities in California have made a last-minute decision to stop using electronic machines, as they have become unreliable and are more open to electoral fraud.

Some Hollywood residents told Digital Planet that if people wanted to cheat, they would do so, regardless of the voting method.

However one resident found that e-voting was a complicated and confusing process, "There are too many options and for the avergae Joe, it's a little too complicated, they need to make it simpler."

Another said: ""Nothing is really one hundred percent safe on the internet, you don't know who is getting what."

More machines, more problems

The issue is not only controversial in California, but nationwide.

Doug Chapin, director of the electiononline.org website which analyses election reform, said that there continues to be a tremendous interest in looking at new ways of how to vote after the disputed elections in 2000.

"The Help America Vote Act in 2000 - which made nearly $4bn available to states and localities to buy new machines or upgrade their old ones - encouraged lots of stares to go out and buy what was then the latest and greatest technology in electronic voting," he said.

But he added that the elections in 2004 saw many high-profile problems with using these new machines.

I don't really think it makes a difference - if someone wants to cheat a vote they will find a way

"Technology has gone wrong in almost every way possible," he said.

"You have inevitable human error - just last week, in the Florida presidential primaries, a lead poll worker accidentally turned off all the machines, which then took a long time to restart.

"In other places you have had screens freeze, power failures due to bad weather and there have also been allegations of 'vote flipping', where people are trying to press the screen to vote for one candidate and the machine wants to keep registering votes for another".

However, an investigation by Digital Planet to the electoral commission in the Indian capital Delhi recently found that electronic voting has been working very successfully.

So why is America struggling to get it right?

Doug Chapin argues that the main problem with US elections is that they can be decided by an unusually slim majority, and are often bitterly contested.

"A tiny number of votes can have a huge impact," he said.

"In some ways that has complicated efforts to really think through what is the best system now but not for the medium to long term."Can we fix it? Yes! Role of the insiders The week ahead

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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How cash can change online games

Online games may be set in fantastical or far future worlds but they share one feature with the real world - the relative scarcity of money.

Life can be tough for the novice characters that players create in games such as World of Warcraft, Runescape and Tabula Rasa because they are unskilled and poor.

While skills will improve as monsters are slaughtered and quests are completed, the scarcity of cash can be a brake on progress for many gamers.

Many fix the problem by turning to a gold seller and buying a chunk of in-game cash, using real world money, to fund their advancement. This is despite the fact that the terms and conditions of many games ban the buying and selling of in-game gear for real money.

Being found out can mean a player is banned and their account is closed.Money markets

As games rack up more and more players the numbers turning to the money sellers and those who only play to amass, or farm, gold that they can then sell have rocketed.

There are many websites that offer to sell players in-game gold for any and every online title.

For games such as Runescape which have millions of players the numbers involved are staggering.

Runescape brought in changes to stop rogue gold traders

"A lot of this is coming from China," he said. "We had tens of thousands of accounts in China that were just bots working the game to make gold and then sell it."

Mr Iddison said that the gold farmers spoiled the experience for many players by camping out near monsters with the most valuable loot, filling chat channels with spam messages advertising gold, inflating prices and sometimes taking real world cash without handing over the game gear.

In a bid to stem the trade, Jagex changed the Runescape mechanics to make unbalanced trades much harder to do. Mr Iddison said typically game cash was handed over during a transaction for relatively worthless items.

By making it hard for all but dedicated players to conduct such unbalanced trades, Jagex hopes to stifle the farmers.

Early reports suggest the changes are having an impact, said Mr Iddison with complaints about farmers well down on usual numbers.

"'Legit' outfits are going to have a hard time getting an edge over the farmers of today

Mr Iddison added that Jagex was not wholly against real-money trade, just how it was being practiced in Runescape.

With the right design, he said, it should be possible to make a game that embraces real-money trade that does not damage game play.Buy and sell

Some game firms are trying to do exactly that. The end of 2007 saw the launch of Live Gamer which aims to make it much easier for gamers to buy in-game goods with the blessing of the game makers.

At launch Live Gamer had the backing of online game makers such as Funcom (Age of Conan and Anarchy Online), Sony Online Entertainment (Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies) and Acclaim (Bots, 9Dragons).

Co-founder Andrew Schneider said that when the service goes live players would be able to buy and sell gold and gear while still in the game world - rather than step outside it and go to a website.

"We're working with the publishers to integrate our client software so that it does not break the fourth wall," said Mr Schneider.

The system would involve a player to player market place similar to the auction houses seen in many games already and which are often the busiest places in the virtual worlds.

Blizzard has banned accounts engaged in gold-farming and trading

"There's a better way of addressing the consumer demand," said Mr Schneider.

"We anticipate that well-known market dynamics will occur a secondary market is introduced into any market such as exists in the game worlds," he said. "There's typically uplift for both sides."

But not all game watchers are convinced that real money trading will take off.

Michael Zenke, an editor at online game website MMOG Nation, expressed scepticism about Live Gamer's prospects.

Despite the rampant participation in real-money trade by players, it's still a big taboo to talk about it," he said.

"'Legit' outfits are going to have a hard time getting an edge over the farmers of today, because there are certain companies (EA, Mythic, Blizzard) that will never ally with them," he told the BBC News website.

He expected that Live Gamer would find some success with those players who want a reliable source and a further few who did not like the tactics of gold sellers.

"Otherwise," he said, "I don't see there being much room for traction there." Can we fix it? Yes! Role of the insiders The week ahead

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Chips pass two billion milestone

The first chip to pack more than two billion transistors has been launched by silicon giant Intel.

The quad-core chip, known as Tukwila, is designed for high-end servers rather than personal computers.

It operates at speeds of up to 2GHz, the equivalent of a standard PC chip.

It marks the latest milestone in chip technology; Intel released the first processor to contain more than one billion transistors in 2006.

Memory machine

The chip industry is driven by Moore's Law, originally articulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965.

The industry axiom states that the number of transistors it is possible to squeeze in to a chip for a fixed cost doubles every two years.

In 2004, the equivalent processor to Tukwila contained 592 million of the tiny switches.

Although the new chip packs more than 2 billion transistors it operates at a relatively modest speed of 2GHz, the equivalent of many PC chips.

Last year IBM released what was described as the "world's fastest commercial chip" that operates at 4.7GHz.

The dual-core Power6 processor contains just 790 million transistors.

A large number of the transistors on the new Intel chip are used for memory.

"[It] contains lots of onboard memory and registers which are just a very efficient computer architecture to process data faster," said Mr Penn.

Cache memory holds data to be processed by the chip. The closer it is to the processor, the quicker the data can be crunched.

"It's like the difference between getting food from the fridge, rather than from the corner shop," said Mr Penn.

"The very early microprocessors had no cache memory onboard - it was all off chip - and now they have as much as they can fit on within the chip size limitation," he said. Mr Penn. "That's an ongoing trend."

Tiny technology

The chip also bucks the trend seen in many modern processors of aiming for lower power consumption.

"That's very much a reflection of the market place demands," said Justin Ratner, chief technology officer of the firm.

He said that firms that used the chips demanded more performance and were willing to trade power to get it.

"These chips go into a quite a unique market place," he said.

The firm will also show off a chip designed for ultra-mobile devices, known as Silverthorne.

The processor is based on the firms latest transistor technology which contains features just 45 nanometres (billionth of a metre) wide.

Tukwila is based on 65 nanometre technology.

"[Using 65nm technology] reflects the design time involved in that processor," Mr Ratner told BBC News.

Both chips will be shown off at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco.Can we fix it? Yes! Role of the insiders The week ahead

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Nokia takes second bite at gaming

Nokia N-Gage Mobile giant Nokia has begun a second assault on handheld gaming, with the launch of the N-Gage platform.

The company has shifted its approach, from focusing on a dedicated games system to titles which can be played on a range of Nokia devices.

At launch, only owners of the N81 can use the service but the firm plans to roll it out to other N-series phones.

N-Gage has the support of developers such as EA, Gameloft and Vivendi, who are making titles for the platform.

Nokia first launched its N-Gage handset in 2003, designed to compete with the highly-successful Nintendo GameBoy.

But the device was criticised for its design and poor sales led to the phone being quickly overhauled with new versions, including the QD.

"There is lots of hidden demand for games, which isn't yet reflected in revenue and purchases

Nokia persevered with the device, in different incarnations, and had sold more than two million so-called game decks by August 2007.

Last year the firm said it was concentrating on N-Gage as a platform for titles, rather than as a specific handset.

Jaakko Kaidesoja from Nokia's Play New Experience division, said the firm had learned lessons from the original launch.

"This is step two. Step one was the original Nokia N-Gage launch. We are still talking about mobile devices as a convergent platform. People want to have more balanced use for their devices.

'Active market'

"If you have a game orientated design you will only reach a niche market. It's an active market but still niche.

"If you want broader reach you need to give people choice - some people want a more image-orientated phone, some a more music-focused device."

David MacQueen, Screen Digest's senior mobile content analyst, said Nokia had failed to reach its targets with the original N-Gage.

Mobile gaming is quite a big revenue generator

"There wasn't a market there to support it. But there are enough N-Series phones in the market place to make developers like EA and Gameloft invest money in games for the platform."

N-Gage will be competing for a slice of an industry worth more than $1bn.

"Mobile gaming is quite a big revenue generator," said Mr MacQueen.

Mr Kaidesoja said Nokia was not trying to compete with dedicated handheld devices, like the Sony PSP, or DS Lite.

Nintendo expects to sell almost 30 million DS Lite consoles in the coming year, while Sony says it will ship 13 million PSPs.

The original N-Gage did not sell as expected

N-Gage is now a software download, which once installed acts as a gateway to games.

Mr Kaidesoja said N-Gage titles were designed around the context of mobile gaming. "Lots of people talk about killing time. We are trying to create an experience that allows people to find time. It's more casual and light.

"It doesn't require an hour or half an hour. You need to complete something in five minutes and it has to be meaningful and exciting and joyful."

Nokia has said it is now easier to find and download games using N-Gage, and customers can also "try before you buy".

"There is lots of hidden demand for games, which isn't yet reflected in revenue and purchases."

'Poor man's version'

"Developers have realised they can't just make mobile versions of big brand games, because it was seen as a poor man's version of the full console experience," said Mr MacQueen.

"Companies have realised that mobile games have to be much more of a mainstream proposition," he added.

Mr Kaidesoja said phones like the N95, which has a built-in 3D graphics accelerator, were powerful enough to create immersive experiences.

"We are learning what consumers want, what is appealing to them. We are trying to find the golden nugget.

"One of the best things we learned from the original N-Gage is that you can create a community and people appreciate the connectivity.

"All of the games on the N-Gage platform have some sort of connectivity - such as instant messaging and a friends list."

He said Nokia was looking at ways to create games which combined connectivity, with GPS, and web 2.0 applications.

"We are looking at a new form of gaming, unlike our traditional ideas of games," he said.Can we fix it? Yes! Role of the insiders The week ahead

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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Work begins to repair severed net

Work has begun to repair two damaged internet cables in the Mediterranean Sea that were severed last week.

Flag Telecom, one of the firms responsible for the cables, says it will take about a week to be fixed.

The break in cables has caused disruption to net services in the Middle East and India. The cause is still not known.

Repairs will involve a team of about 50 people, including navigation experts and cable engineers, said Flag Telecom.

The ship that will repair the first severed cable is already in place, with repairs underway, while the second vessel is expected to begin work on Tuesday.

Bespoke ships

"It will be a highly technical job and should take a week to complete," a spokesperson for Flag Telecom told the BBC News website.

The cause of the damage has not been officially confirmed but there have been reports that the breaks were related to a tanker dragging its anchor along the sea bed.

However, the Egyptian communications ministry has denied any ships were in the area at the time of the break.

The first job in such a situation was to find the exact location of the damaged cable, said Mark Harper, manager of cable system support at Cable and Wireless.

The firm is not involved in the repair operation, but has carried out similar work in the past.

Often the location of a break can be found by cable engineers back on shore. The areas affected by the outage will give key clues as to what part of the cable is broken.

To get a more precise location, cable engineers can send light pulses along the fibres in the cable using a device known as a Optical Time Domain Reflectometer.

When the pulses hit the broken part of the cable they will bounce back and by measuring the time it takes for them to return, engineers can ascertain the location of the damage to within tens of metres.

The next stage is to employ a specially fitted cable ship, which will have onboard remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).

Fishing

If the ROV is able to locate the cable it can cut out the non-working sections and pull the cable back onto the ship.

Alternatively a device onboard known as a grapnel can hook the cable from the sea floor and drag it on to the ship.

"The first option is preferable because it means you can recover the cable very close to the end whereas a grapnel is less precise," said Mr Harper.

Grapnels have been in use for hundreds of years, and so were part of the equipment employed when the first telegraph cables were laid.

The damaged cable can be repaired on the ship at which point a technician will splice new cable to the existing pieces.

Once repaired it can be lowered back to the seabed.

Two cable operators were involved in this most recent outage.

FLAG Telecoms, which has responsibility for the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG), a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable and SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 project - which links South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, and India suffered up to 60% disruption.

Disruption also occurred in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, reported the Associated Press.

In Dubai, at least two internet service providers (ISPs) were affected.

In December 2006, seven of the eight cables connected to Taiwan were damaged by an earthquake, disrupting communications in much of Asia.

These cables took several months to fully repair.

Natural disasters are one of several causes of cable outages.

In this case, an errant anchor has been blamed and Mr Harper believes there is "still a partial conflict between the needs of shipping and of telecoms".

But it is not the biggest problem facing cable operators.

"Fishing is still the biggest issue. Historically in Europe trawler fishing has been a problem although in the last 15 years most cables have been buried in the seabed to overcome this," said Mr Harper.

Can we fix it? Yes! Role of the insiders The week ahead

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

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