SUPERIOR, Colo.--If you remember the scene from Pixar's "Wall-E," in which a rocket ship on its way to humankind's space station blasts through a debris field of abandoned satellites, you may have wondered if anyone on Earth is working to prevent that from becoming reality.
The answer is yes.
Here in this small town not far from Boulder, Colo., the Secure World Foundation (SWF), a nonprofit unassociated with any government, is thinking about that kind of issue, as well as several others related to the fair use of space, and succeeding at getting its analysis and recommendations heard by decision makers around the world.
The Secure World Foundation is a nonprofit that is advocating for the fair use of outer space.
(Credit: Secure World Foundation)"We promote the need for space governance," said Phil Smith, the Secure World Foundation's communications director, and help "establish effective systems of governance in outer space."
I visited the organization's headquarters--discreetly tucked away in a small house in a residential neighborhood here--as part of Road Trip 2009. I wanted to see what, if anything, people are doing to ensure that space isn't fully dominated--and contaminated--by any one or two countries.
Smith explained that the SWF breaks its definition of space governance into several different categories: international civil space situational awareness; mitigation of orbital debris; establishing systems for the efficient sharing of data from space-based remote sensing platforms; and working to prevent a space arms race.
While it may be easy to discount the efforts of a small organization based far from Washington, Brussels, Moscow, or Beijing, Smith said that the SWF's $1.5 million annual budget comes entirely from the philanthropy of a very-well connected family interested in promoting such issues.
Further he said, while its headquarters is in Superior, the SWF does maintain an office in Washington, as well as in Vienna, Austria, and makes its research and analysis known by working directly, with permanent observer status, with the United Nation's 69-member Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
The SWF doesn't have voting rights on the committee, Smith clarified, but does sit in on its meetings and provide advice when needed.
That means, Smith continued, the SWF has three main goals: facilitating meetings between various interested groups to hash out issues; advocating for space governance; and spreading the word of its analysis by, among other things, giving briefings on Capitol Hill, and to local and state governments because the issues it works on do impact the space industry, and officials may not always be aware of the various things going on at the international and domestic level.
But ultimately, while the SWF does share its opinions with Congress, its primary constituency is not the U.S. government, but rather the international community, Smith said.
Space traffic management
To the SWF, space situational awareness (SSA) is a significant component of space traffic management. Essentially, Smith said, it's a bit like air traffic control.
The U.S. Air Force, he said, does most of the tracking and watches about 19,000 objects four inches or larger orbiting Earth, most of which are satellites that are either still functional or dead. But the SWF considers tracking space weather an equally important part of the equation, Smith said.
For example, those with assets in space have a constant need to be aware of things such as whether the sun is sending off rare coronal mass ejections, a major event of solar flare activity, which can cause considerable amounts of damage to satellites.
Further, detecting such events would be crucial if there were astronauts in space, as they could be killed if they weren't quickly returned from orbit.
And to that end, the SWF is able to access and monitor data that comes from a satellite called Soho, which monitors the sun 24 hours a day, looking for just this kind of solar activity.
Ultimately, Smith said, space traffic management is kind of an umbrella discipline that comprises things like SSA and monitoring space weather and orbital debris. And because there is general agreement that space traffic management is broadly necessary, Smith added, it's not as controversial as, say, discussing management of space weapons.
Space weapons
The management of space weapons, however, is "typically a starting point for controversy," Smith said. This, mainly, is about the development of anti-satellite weapons.
There is some concern about whether a country's satellite launch vehicle might instead be geared to launching a missile, which is where Iran and North Korea are causing controversy, Smith argued. But the SWF's main focus is on anti-satellite weapons, which are typically space- or ground-based systems designed for the disabling of satellites.
And, Smith said, there are just three countries thought to already be capable of such weapons: the United States, China, and Russia. However, he added, anyone with a launch vehicle technically has the ability to target satellites, meaning that countries like Japan, Israel, India, and now Iran could be added to that list.
The idea is to stave off the development of space weapons. The United Nations' Conference on Disarmament is the main international organization looking at this, though Smith pointed out that there are today no known space weapons in orbit. But it's a definitional problem, he explained. At one time, the Soviet Union thought that the Space Shuttle was meant to be a space weapon that could, for example, orbit and grab satellites.
But today, the goal is to prevent the development of such weapons, and that is handled mainly by the Conference on Disarmament, Smith said. While the SWF is an observer at the U.N., it doesn't have such status with the Conference on Disarmament. Instead, the organization relies on its extensive roster of contacts and relationships to influence the space weapons discussion, Smith explained.
Orbital debris
Beyond the political problems anti-satellite weapons can create, the SWF is concerned about them because of their potential to create space debris. That's because a destroyed or dead satellite can wreak havoc on functional satellites.
"A small piece (of debris) can create an enormous amount of damage due to kinetic energy," he said.
Today, Smith said, there are voluntary guidelines that member nations adhere to when it comes to creating space debris. But the SWF is hoping to make those guidelines "more robust," he said. Of course, while it's impossible to do away entirely with space debris, everyone involved is hoping to stop it as much as possible.
The question is, how do you prevent the creation of debris? Do you forge a treaty, Smith said, or a strong, fundamental set of rules everyone agrees to abide by. But enforcement is a big problem, he added. It may, in the end, be about peer pressure. For example, he said that in 2007, China launched an anti-satellite weapon at one of its defunct satellites, destroying it and creating a great deal of debris in the process.
From China's perspective, the test proved that it had the technology--and once proved, it's not necessary to have to do it again--but the country also took a lot of flak from the international community for creating the massive amount of debris.
The big idea is to figure out how to best track space debris to provide data to satellite owners so that they can maneuver their assets around junk that might cause significant damage, and therefore additional debris. Still, with the amount of space activity growing, it is expected that space debris will increase over time, as well.
Planetary defense
Another main area of SWF's focus is on planetary defense, or the protection of Earth against asteroids, or comets, or other space junk that could appear out of nowhere, impact the planet and cause serious problems, up to and including massive species extinction.
The Association of Space Explorers, a group of former astronauts, is one group that is focusing on this issue, and has produced a report on how to deal with this issue at a policy level.
But again, the SWF gets involved at the international policy level, weighing in when asked by the U.N. about what to do with the astronauts' report. The idea is to prepare a plan so that if a hazardous space object is detected, we know what to do about it, rather than having to create a plan on the fly.
And that leads to a final area of the SWF's main focus: data sharing.
The SWF wants to ensure, Smith said, that everyone has access to data that can be collected by satellites about global vegetation growth, about the effects of global warming, as well as many of the issues discussed above.
While a small organization without major funding or direct involvement in any of the issues it studies, the SWF would seem to have limited power. But because it is consulted regularly by the United Nations and has contacts throughout the world, we can all hope that having a non-governmental nonprofit looking out for the fair use of space will help further that goal. After all, who else is going to argue for space?
Happy New Year, everyone.
And according to some very unexpected messages I got today, it seems it's also my birthday.
Which is strange, because unless my parents were lying to me, I believe I was born in November. Yet, when I finally woke up today and checked in with the Internets, I found eight messages waiting for me, wishing me a happy birthday.
The first actually came yesterday afternoon before 6 p.m. my time, and it was from a former CNET News colleague. I was confused, but thought that perhaps it was a birthday message that got lost in a wormhole back in November and finally figured out how to find its way through the Tubes to my inbox. These things happen.
But the sign that something odd was truly happening came today when, in my e-mail in-box there was a message posted from a friend to a list I'm on, also wishing me a happy birthday.
This got me wondering. The first message, from the former co-worker, had actually been delivered via Facebook. And then, when I checked my e-mail again just now, there were notes informing me that six friends on Facebook had written on my wall, all wishing me, well, you know.
The topper, finally, was the note I found when I logged into Facebook, from the Facebook "team."
This birthday greeting was waiting for me on Facebook today. The only thing is, it's not my birthday.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)By now, I knew what was going on. When I signed up for Facebook, I entered my birthday, as I often do on Web sites that ask for it, as January 1. I do that because it's easy for me to remember, because it's sort of close to my real birthday, and most importantly, because there's no way I'm giving a Web site my real birthday.
Hello! Identity theft, anyone?
In the past, this has never come back to me in any way. To be sure, I know that by submitting a false birthday, I'm probably violating sites' terms of service, and now maybe I'll be kicked off Facebook. But still, I value my privacy and have no intention of revealing a piece of information that is very useful to anyone wishing to do harm with it.
Then again, there's all these wonderful friends -- not to mention the Facebook team -- who were nice enough to notice it is my "birthday" today. What to do about them?
Well, I guess the answer is to out myself, and say that this is a totally unexpected artifact of my attempt to maintain some privacy while also using Web sites that want to leverage the use of my personal data. And yours, of course.
I've always wondered why sites like Facebook need to know my birthday, and my uninformed answer was a combination of security and micro-targeting.
And in most cases, it's never come up. But with a site like Facebook, where the social factor in things like this come to the fore, it obviously does come up, and it makes me wonder. Do most people put in their real birthday? Don't they worry about the consequences? Or maybe there aren't really any consequences. It's not, after all, as though giving out your birthday is the same as revealing your Social Security number or your mother's maiden name.
But with so many of these birthday messages today, I guess I'm seeing that that little piece of information does have a social purpose. Will that get me to change it (assuming Facebook doesn't kick me off for lying)? Not a chance.
I mean, hey, how else can you get people to celebrate your birthday twice a year? I'll take my presents now please.
For the 122 companies that were featured presenters at DemoFall and TechCrunch50 this week, the pressure of making their cases onstage to the audiences of press, venture capitalists, and analysts is now over.
To be sure, those companies now have to make good on the products they introduced, and the market will soon make it very clear who the winners and losers are.
But as the dust settles from DemoFall, where I and my colleague Elinor Mills spent Sunday through Tuesday watching dozens of companies' presentations and talking to many of the people behind those products, I have a few thoughts on the event to share.
First, despite TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington's obvious desire to kill Demo as an important place for many tech companies to launch their products, the fact that TC50 happened at the same time did not have any noticeable effect on Demo.
I say that as someone who spent Sunday evening trying to work the crowd at the traditional first-night cocktail party hosted by Demo lead organizer Chris Shipley and her team. If there was any less attendance at the event due to the timing of TC50, it certainly was belied by the crush of people standing around drinking and talking, making it nearly impossible to move around, and by the packed auditorium at the Sheraton San Diego, where DemoFall took place.
Arrington also told me last week that he expected most of the technology press to be at his event. And not being there--several CNET colleagues covered that show--I can't speak to how many were. But I can say that the press section at Demo was no less full than at any previous iteration of the event I've been to. And the press section on the Demo Web site on Wednesday has links to many dozens of stories written during the two days, which indicates to me that the companies presenting at Demo got a pretty significant amount of coverage.
And because I gather TC50 had a pretty healthy crowd as well, I conclude that despite the meager state of the economy today, there is ample interest in new technology products, especially those that are Internet-related, as nearly every one of the ones at Demo was and, I gather, at TC50 as well.
So, absent any "Demo is dying" story line, the focus fairly needs to be put squarely on the companies that presented and their products.
As with any such conference, there was a wide spectrum of quality among the 72 companies that took the stage for six minutes apiece Monday and Tuesday. I've been to four previous Demos, and this one felt very much like the others. Indeed, the structure is the same each time, with very little variance. And why not? If your formula works, why alter it?
There were certainly a few stand-out companies, and perhaps the most impressive of the 72 presentations was one by Plastic Logic, which showed off its ultra-thin e-Reader. I think we still have a long way to go before this kind of device is mainstream, but the one Plastic Logic showed Monday morning was the best I've yet seen. The prototype the company showed was light, supposedly has long battery life, and can display on its rather wide screen books, newspapers, magazines, PDFs, and many other documents.
There were also a few easy-to-identify trends, and fortunately, those trends were different than in previous years.
In the past, I had felt Demo put far too much emphasis on photo- and video-sharing services: Over the four previous times I'd attended, I'd seen so many different versions of the same basic business model that I wondered if any of the companies behind them had ever heard of YouTube or Flickr.
This time, to me, the most interesting trend, as I wrote Tuesday, was companies building either entire businesses or significant parts of their businesses on iPhone applications.
I didn't talk to every company that showed at Demo this week, but I identified at least 10 different iPhone app plays, and Shipley herself had told me informally at the Sunday night cocktail party that she expected around a couple of dozen iPhone apps to be shown during the two days, either on the stage during the companies' six-minute presentations or on the show floor when they have a little more time to explain themselves and what they're doing.
Mapflow's application designed to help drivers offset some of the cost of commuting by using their iPhones to find riders was just one of many products shown at DemoFall for Apple's hit mobile device.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)In addition to iPhone applications, at the show.
Among them: iWidgets, which launched a service that helps brands syndicate their content on Facebook member pages, and social sharing platform Kadoo, which allows people to share their Facebook data with anyone, whether or not they are on that network. SkyData lets people get their Facebook information on their mobile device; and FamilyBuilder is letting people link together
Another area of concentration was search. Intelius launched iSearch, which offers comprehensive people search; Semanti offered up its semantic-based Web search SemantiFind; Infovell introduced a new way to mine the deep Web of unstructured data that is hidden from major search engines; and Rebus Technology's desktop search helps people find digital documents as well as paper documents that are faxed and scanned.
Other presentations were geared toward empowering consumers. RealNetworks introduced RealDVD for people who want to rip DVDs to their hard drive just like they do CDs. HeyCosmo helps automate party and event planning, even making phone calls for you . And 's new hands-free service lets people use voice commands to retrieve and send e-mails and text messages over their mobile phone, as well as send dictated text messages, use voice to reply to e-mail messages, and listen to text-based messages. And for the online news junkies among us, SpinSpotter debuted its new service that lets readers un-spin the news they read.
Some presenters also aimed to that plague consumers and corporations. For instance, Usable Security Systems has come up with a way for people to remember only one password for every site they log into on the Web. introduced a service that helps people locate and disable lost or stolen phones. Unity Solutions introduced Lanxoma, software that will allow executives to keep an eye on IT workers in the hopes of reducing insider security threats. And CoreTrace's Bouncer software automatically creates a white list of safe applications and blocks applications that aren't on the list that could contain malicious software. And Fortressware offers protection against data leaks, allowing companies to block printing, copying, and forwarding of sensitive documents.
Probably the biggest company to present a new product was Best Buy, which launched a service dubbed Giftag that lets people create wish lists composed of items from anywhere on the Web.
All in all, Demo proved it was alive and well. It lured a large crowd, a significant number of press outlets, and even featured an onstage discussion between influential tech writers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.
I wrote in April that the winner of the DemoFall/TC50 showdown would be the one that got Mossberg. But in the end, it wasn't at all about which event carried the day, since it seems both had packed houses and energized companies.
The winner, one hopes, will end up being the companies whose products end up making differences in real people's lives.
CNET News' Elinor Mills contributed to this report.
The TSA has launched a new public blog and is inviting comments, many of which are from angry passengers.
(Credit: U.S. Transportation Security Administration)Over on Boing Boing this morning, I read about the U.S. Transportation Security Administration's brand new blog, called Evolution of Security.
The idea behind the blog, according to TSA administrator Kip Hawley, is "to provide here a forum for a lively, open discussion of TSA issues. While I and senior leadership of TSA will participate in the discussion, we are turning the keyboard over to several hosts who represent what's best about TSA (its people). Our hosts aren't responsible for TSA's policies, nor will they have to defend them--their job is to engage with you straight-up and take it from there."
Well, so far, at least, it appears the public has grabbed its opportunity to speak directly to the TSA and is, well, shall we say, expressing itself rather vehemently.
"The TSA liquid policy is ludicrous and indefensible," wrote a commenter called "doctor anonymous." "It suggests that 6 oz of liquid can blow up a plane but two 3-oz containers can't. In addition, it was instituted in the wake of an impossible plot--the London bombing plot in 2006 supposedly entailed the manufacture of TATP aboard an aircraft with precursors brought aboard. But, of course, this is impossible. Synthesis of TATP is difficult--as I learned long ago in Chemistry class in a pre-9/11 world--enough in a laboratory, requiring careful control of temperature, and many hours of drying time. It couldn't be done in an airplane lav."
Or this one, from an anonymous poster: "Dear fear mongering air gestapo, While I appreciate your attempt to tell people that your agency is staffed by human beings with a difficult job, that doesn't mean their job is worthy of respect.
"TSA: Preventing implausible threats while unable to cope with tests for real ones, all the while saying 'papers please' and destroying America."
Of course, some comments are more positive than that. Many TSA employees, for example, have written in to praise their organization for launching the blog, on the theory that opening a dialog is a good thing. And even some purported passengers seem to think the TSA is doing the best it can.
On the whole, however, I hope TSA personnel are able to hear the kind of criticism they're sure to get over the next few days and weeks without pulling the plug on this.
I actually think the blog is a very good idea if some sort of progress comes from the back and forth. If the TSA simply ignores the comments and the suggestions made by the people who fly every day, then it is a useless waste of bandwidth.
Though, giving frustrated people a place to vent is always valuable, right?
In the realm of companies I wouldn't expect to release an online game, Symantec is right up at the top of the list.
But that's just what the security software firm has done with its Cyber Smackdown online quiz, a Web-based game that tasks players with answering questions related to cyber security.
Symantec's new 'Cyber Smackdown' online game tasks players with answering questions about cyber-security. Unfortunately, the list of questions is very short and the answers are too easy.
(Credit: Symantec)It's a good idea, and if Symantec had bothered to come up with some difficult questions or even a few dozen different questions, it would have also been a nice manifestation.
Unfortunately, it seems--from my multiple tests of the game on both Safari and Firefox, at least--that the game's creators only bothered to write 12 questions, and so if you take the quiz multiple times, you just get the same questions in a different order. How challenging!
I scoff because, let's be honest, how hard would it have been to write, say, 24 questions? Or 36? Or 48? So that if someone felt like taking the quiz again, they might find new questions.
As it is, the list of questions runs along the lines of "What percentage of those surveyed said they have received a fraudulent email from someone pretending to be a real institution asking for personal information?"
There's also questions that ask for a definition (from a multiple choice list) for malware or typo-squatting.
The questions themselves weren't all that bad, though for the most part the answers were rather obvious. I just wish there had been way more of them.
I suppose, in the end, this exercise wasn't really about presenting players with any kind of real challenge, but more just to get Symantec's Norton brand name in front of people who like to play games. Symantec released the game at CES this week, so it was obviously counting on passers-by getting excited by the game.
But sitting here at my desk at CNET, I have to say I'm not so impressed.
Update at 2:49 PM: I just heard from Symantec, and the deal is that the company plans to release a full version of the game on Jan. 10 which will have 120 questions. The version with 12 questions is a CES-only version.
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