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Dinosaur News

For the dinosaur enthusiasts out there, here in article talking about recent fossil finds, soft tissue finds in fossils and what this can tell us about how animals live. It seems doubtful that we will ever discover dinosaur DNA but it seems like we may have found dinosaur proteins. The article also describes T. rex as an animal with much better sensory skills than we thought possible and at the same time the animal seems to be a lumbering giant not capable of the speeds it achieves in popular Steven Spielberg movies.

In addition the dinosaurs seem much more related to birds than crocodiles according to the evidence of blood flow through their bones.

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IDT and Net2phone Merge

The 28 million dollar Net2Phone/IDT merger is not really huge news but it makes you wonder why the two long-time players in VoIP are merging today and not let’s say 2 years ago. I haven’t had a chance to do the research so if any of my readers are in the loop, please chime in.

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Nokia Predicts Massive IMS Growth

According to this article Nokia thinks the IMS market will be huge. There are a number of reasons including the need for more revenue creation opportunities and services. Services like mobile video and fixed mobile convergence are discussed in the article.

Here are some excerpts:

IMS has been a focus at this year's mobile industry trade show in Barcelona, with announcements from firms such as TeliaSonera, Ericsson, Vodafone and Nokia on plans for the technology.

IMS is a platform that allows telecoms providers to quickly rollout new services, such as video calling, and it allows consumers to use one phone which automatically switches between mobile and fixed-line networks.

"The IMS market is not big yet, but it is of strategic importance," said Kai Konola, head of strategy at Nokia's networks unit.

"In 2006 I would expect it to be in the ballpark of 100-200 million euros. In 3-4 years time it will be an over 1 billion market," he said.

Electronics manufacturer Flextronics said in a statement more than 200 fixed-line and mobile telecom operators were running trials using IMS.

Every major technology firm, including the world's top network maker Ericsson and U.S. Internet technology firm Cisco Systems Inc., are offering products to blend mobile and fixed networks.

"Everybody whose somebody in the mobile or fixed side will see themselves as an important player," said Markus Kantola, director of marketing and sales for core networks at Nokia's networks unit.

"Everyone is trying to claim a victory in next generation networks," he said.

Telecom carriers are turning to IMS for growth at a time when mobile call prices are falling and fixed line clients are fleeing to use Internet calls.

"For operators the questions is simple. What role they are going to play? Are they going to be only the pipe, or are they going to also have subscribers, like before?" said Eran Dotan, head of privately-held telecoms software firm Outsmart.

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Rumsfeld on eBay

Rumsfeld says that terrorist groups have mastered getting media attention. The US government is well behind. Here are some direct quotes from the article:

"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but ... our country has not adapted," Rumsfeld said.

"For the most part, the U.S. government still functions as a 'five and dime' store in an eBay world," Rumsfeld said, referring to old-fashioned U.S. retail stores and the online auction house respectively.

The Bush administration has not been the most technically savvy and I am proud to see that someone who is a senior member of the administration is acknowledging how important technology is. The next step is a broadband policy that protects companies and users from predatory two-tier type Internet practices.

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Sea Levels Could Increase by 25 Meters

Greenland's ice caps are apparently melting at a rapid clip. Here is a story that discusses the potential problems of this happening. In addition there is discussion about how current climate models may not be able to predict how high sea levels can go. The article says that sea levels can increase by 25 meters! Excerpt:

Our Nasa scientists have measured this in Greenland. And once these ice streams start moving, their influence stretches right to the interior of the ice sheet. Building an ice sheet takes a long time, because it is limited by snowfall. But destroying it can be explosively rapid.

How fast can this go? Right now, I think our best measure is what happened in the past. We know that, for instance, 14,000 years ago sea levels rose by 20m in 400 years - that is five metres in a century. This was towards the end of the last ice age, so there was more ice around. But, on the other hand, temperatures were not warming as fast as today.

How far can it go? The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today - which is what we expect later this century - sea levels were 25m higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don't act soon. None of the current climate and ice models predict this. But I prefer the evidence from the Earth's history and my own eyes. I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself.

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Skype Eavesdropping

It is generally assumed that Skype calls cannot be tapped and since the company uses 256 bit encryption Skype calls are twice as secure as many internet credit card transactions. According to this story, Kurt Sauer, Skype’s chief security officer says, there are no "back doors" that could let a government bypass the encryption on a call. At the same time, he said Skype "cooperates fully with all lawful requests from relevant authorities." He would not give particulars on the type of support provided.

So if the government has an IP address of a person on a Skype call and the cooperation of the ISP they are able to record all packets going to that address. They may even be able to do this without proactive ISP cooperation. At this point, since they have Skype’s help, they may be able to unencrypt the call. In theory they could also ask Skype to send duplicate voice packets destined for specific callers to a government agency.

So while many view VoIP as a technology that makes the government’s job more difficult, it may actually make it easier in certain cases. After all, IP makes it easier to record remote call center agent conversations, the same thing can be true of wire tapping.

Since Skype is now owned by eBay I can’t imagine a scenario where they aren’t giving the government the keys to their encryption system. After all CALEA may not apply officially to Skype calls that stay on network but Skype would likely still comply or risk major government problems.

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