On a train

Sleeper trains

Does it really work? Or is it just one of those things we get use to because we have to get use to them?

I choose this moment to exercise my atrophied writing muscle for a lack of better things to do, on this train ride from Zurich to Amsterdam. I realize I should be reading research papers, writing proposals, or be otherwise productive, except that I cannot. I don’t know what it is but being on any long distance, long duration transport just drain the energy out of me. This includes trains, buses, airplanes, cars, cars where I am a passenger, cars where I am the driver, yes cars where I am the driver, boats, and so on. That would be perfectly okay if the state of no energy puts me to sleep, except it doesn’t. I am also the type of person who cannot sleep on long duration transports.

I strongly suspect that I would be the only zombie-like person aboard a space shuttle in the history of the future with my gaze fixed upon the back of my eyelids instead of out of the window where Earth would be.

I was going to come up with ways to fix this situation, except I don’t know how. Granted I have never shelled out triple amount of money to upgrade my seat to a bed, I don’t know if that would help. All this travel around the globe business is just uncomfortable. So 5 or 6 hours later, all I have to thank for is a hot shower in the first class carriage. It’s one of those showers where the upper limit of water temperature seems to be 100C, as in, straight from the boiler. That got me thinking. How many water related scalding emergencies happens every morning?

Then I remembered that the water in normal bathrooms never got that hot, and quite often, never quite hot enough. How did that happen? Maybe the boiler in normal household see no need to maintain the water temperature at close to 100 degrees. Oh yeah, the first class carriage. I suppose it’s nicer, but by having a common shower, I can only assume that the little closed “room” is now more likely a closet with a faucet and a sink. Is that worth doubling the price? Probably, for a rich person.

Technology

Business, for profit. It has garnered a horrible name for itself, but it is so far the only working model for a group to run on. No, governments are failing, uniformly, into a ditch. But the profit has to come from somewhere.

So I purpose a model where the money is funneled from developed nations to developing ones, with 10% or so of profit. This profit would be used to grow the company, and pay its employees a decent wage. Let’s face it, you don’t work for a non-profit for the money, and Google (substitute for any other successful cooperation) gets all the best employees because there is both the monetary incentive and the passion for doing cool stuff.

I also don’t think putting a still developing nation in debt is a good idea, so where does the money come from. What do we (developed nation people) want to shell out money for?

WIFI

The ubiquity of the internet.

Preface: I really don’t know why I wrote this, or what state of mind I was in.

I think this device clearly illustrates how public public spaces really are. I think it’s partly due to the fact that when these technologies were developed, insecure usage by layman wasn’t the top concern of the developers.

Now, we frantically try to patch up these insecurities as an after thought. It’s like trying to make a wicker basket watertight, it can be done, though it will not look pretty or robust. The alternative of building an entirely separate entity from the ground up is next to impossible and there is not the incentive from where the fund lies.

I suppose the best way is to for users to read and understand when the operating system announces that the network they are about to connect to is indeed not secure and proceed accordingly.

I believe the problem lies in the lack of knowledge in how technologies work. I think a lot of the educated paranoids (hint: readers of WSJ) think wi-fi is like this ether that perseveres the air around us, and therefore could not ever be grabbed and read by a malicious person.

As for these involuntarily generated signals. Unless you are Mr. Obama, if someone pays to put surveillance on me, maybe it’s time to start questioning. I do believe the majority of this mass paranoia is unfounded. We are inherently not interested in what others have to say. It’s hard enough to pay attention to the person sitting across from me, how big of a creep would I be to focus on some utter stranger’s tale of boredom.

There are activities that one shouldn’t be engaged in in the first place, and it is not the fault of the surveillance for detecting these activities. Then there are these plainly stupid things that no one would normally do (writing your bank pin number on your most frequented ATM, which if you think about it, isn’t all that bad), yet people unknowingly do all the time on the internet (click “remember my password” when using a public computer and then not log off).

I would not mind doing an educational piece on the basics of the technology around us, but I think they already exist on Youtube. But just like we never think about other things we take for granted, we never spend the time to really understand why. In some cases, that’s okay. As in, we as the mass really can take it for granted, but other times, there can be issues. Things that lead to placing blames, law suits, etc.

One of these thing is the issue of internet security.

Back just ten years ago, most people who used internet knows exactly how it works. It’s a connection of computers. All connections are made by physical telephone cables, information is exchanged through the telephone network as analog signals (like voices). Unless someone is really interested in spying and go to the exchange of the phone company, the information remains safe.

Then a dedicated internet network was constructed. Still okay. Still a network of connected computers.

Therefore we don’t really need to understand how information is transmitted in these wires.

Then someone invented Wi-fi, satellite TV and the cellphone network. Things that are transmitted without a physical connection. But this has been in existence for a long long time. These are electro-magnetic waves, like radio waves. Hopefully you still know what radios are. They are free, and always accessible, can never be blocked. As long as you are at the right frequency, you can listen to your tunes.

Encryption is entirely unnecessary. Ads paid for most of it. There is a brief moment in history, (and in some countries) where radio subscription fees are collected. But that’s just nuts since you can’t un-subscribe.

Some waves have more range than others. But for it to be useful, it must have some range. Wi-fi transmission has a very short range, typically you need a “big” and expensive wireless router to broadcast the signal to your house and even then the attic will have “weak” signals.

But now, if you draw a sphere with the origin being your router, and the extent of the signal being the attic, you will notice that your driveway, and the road in front is well within that sphere. Now consider how fast the data is transmitted. To watch a video on Youtube, you need this much MB of signal. and it will take you this amount of time to load it. Now we consider a string of data, say your credit card number, the name, date of expiry and those three digits on the back, and an optional password. it will take about….one tenth of a second? a car just driving by can scoop it up driving at 50 Km/h, times over.

Now think about how this information is transmitted. There is an emitter in your router, and one in your computer (yes there is one, some old computers don’t and that’s why you need to buy a wireless card with a little antenna).

It goes like this, you type in “ebay.com”, your computer emits it to everywhere within the emission sphere, because it doesn’t know where the router is, the signal is never direct. the router picks that up, and sends back the webpage of bank.com, your computer displays it, and you pick the thing you wanna buy and the exchange goes back and forth until you decide you want to buy this thing. Then you type in your payment info and shipping info. Done.

Your computer again broadcast all that information in the sphere of its emitter, which also includes the road, bam, the passing by crook knows how to buy a yacht with your credit card.

Even worse, he can use your network to buy his yacht. in addition to your credit card. and ship it to you and pick it up without you knowing.

Paypal, ebay won’t know the difference. Yes Paypal is secure, and for all intent and purposes not-hackable. but why would you hack Paypal when you can just get the data free of charge driving by.

The layer of protection you have is the password that when the cable companies tell you when the technician install the “internet”. Many people don’t have this password (i know friends who have never paid for internet all throughout their university by simply using others), and many others use the default password, which by the way, is the same for every router of the same brand. considering cable companies use about…2 different brands of router, the guesswork is minimal.
Then there is that small percentage who actually customize their password and such. But Wifi is so ubiquitous that no one needs to hack when there are free ones available. Apply this to a coffee shop, or the airport, or anywhere where the wifi radius is massive and unsecure.
Of course there are ways to protect your connection and no one knows about them. except some IT gurus on the internet. If you like to protect yourself then read those.

I don’t even advocate for those, and I have surely never employed MAC address identification or hiding my wireless connection from the list. and I have, admittedly stupidly bought stuff online over public network, yet I have never had credit card fraud or any type of identity theft.

Why? Not for any technological reasons, but mostly because people who are pro at scamming isn’t interested in my petty cash. They have bigger fishes to fry. Those bigger fishes have better protection systems accordingly. Social evolution at its best, eh?