billso.com

Cnet has a report on a cellular base station that can switch among wind, solar and diesel generators. This Gizmodo article has a few more details about E-site.

It’s an interesting concept that would be useful in developing countries. In Africa, diesel generators are often used to provide coverage. A cleaner alternative would be welcome.

As I pointed out on 29 March 2008, power isn’t the only problem that mobile phone carriers face in developing countries. Terrorists, insurgents, and other groups may target cellular base stations to knock out coverage or make a political statement. On the other hand, these same groups often rely on mobile phones.

E-sites also make sense for Hawaii. Oahu has good mobile phone coverage, but there are many parts of this island and the neighbor islands that are served by one carrier, if coverage is even available. Adding wind and solar power generation capabilities to existing base stations can also improve reliability during brownouts, blackouts, and seismic events. The wind and solar generators can be used to charge backup batteries, or to provide primary power.

Last Thursday, I posted a brief article about Internet problems in India, Africa and the Middle East. Two undersea cables had been cut in the Mediterranean Sea, near Egypt.

In the following days, two more undersea cables were damaged. The International Herald Tribune printed an article about the third cable cut, and Wired followed suit with its own article, including a helpful map.

This Tuesday, as Reuters was reporting that a repair ship had reached one of the cut cables, reports surfaced of a fifth cable cut in the same region. BoingBoing has been following the cable cut story, and linked to a report from a Dubai newspaper. CrunchGear also reported on the fifth cut, and added a global map of high-speed fiber-optic connections. Wired claims the fifth cut is actually a cable failure that occurred before the Egypt cuts.

Bruce Schneier has a brief article with several links that I’ve used in this article.

All of these cable failures can be repaired. Here’s a link to pictures of various cable repair ships.

In the meantime, attention is focused on something most Internet users take for granted: the fiber backbone that supports the Internet.

From VNUnet.com and UPI: Earlier today two undersea cables that carried Internet traffic to the Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent was damaged. The outage is most noticeable in India, Pakistan, Kuwait and Dubai. Internet traffic has mostly be rerouted to slower cables, and the damaged cables may not be repaired for another week.

No word yet on how this has affected outsourced operations in India. A CNN report claims that Dubai’s financial sector, television stations and telephone services have been affected by the outage. CNN also quotes sources who state that the damage was caused by a ship’s anchor.

Heather Paulson of revenews.com posted a comment that software development firms and their clients are panicking a bit over the situation.

This article first appeared on my old blog at  http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=38

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,71387-0.html

“In Nigeria, we are always amazed that anyone could be so stupid as to respond to such an offer.” - Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

This article describes how a few Internet users have battled so-called “419” scammers.

These 419 scams are named after a Nigerian law that prohibits fraudulent financial transactions. While this is an old scam, it became associated with Nigeria in the early 1990s. Scammers mailed thousands of postal letters to addresses gleaned from paper membership directories. North America, Australia and Western Europe were frequent targets.

Typical 419 scams involve advance fee fraud, in which the scammer asks the recipient to receive or launder a large sum of money. The scammer often portrays themself as an innocent victim stranded in another country, and promises the recipient a percentage of the funds in return for assistance.

The 419 scam is a risky venture, but it only takes one or two paying victims to make this a profitable endeavor for a scammer. As the scam progresses, the scammer asks the victim to send money in advance, as a token of good faith. The scammer may send photographs, forged documents and other materials in an attempt to gain the vitim’s cooperation.

Most victims lose all of their money. An average victim loses around US$20,000, and estimates have placed losses at US$1.5 billion annually. (http://www.419eater.com/html/ethics.htm)

Victims find there is no easy way to pursue the matter across international borders. In rare instances, victims have travelled abroad to meet the scammer, sometimes with disastrous results.

As Internet use became more popular, scammers around the world shifted their efforts to e-mail. Internet e-mail, in its basic implementation, lacks systems to verify the identities of senders and recipients. An alarming number of Internet users assume that the “from:” address included in an e-mail message is authentic, despite the content of the message.

These 419 scams have become a significant source of “spam” or unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). While most server-based filtering systems can detect 419 messages, scammers find new ways to get their e-mails delivered.

The people described in this article feign interest in a scammer’s proposition of quick wealth. The assumption is that the scammers will have less time to find new victims. Users sometimes post their correspondence with the scammers, including names, pictures and other information, in an attempt to shame the scammers and warn unsuspecting victims.

Does the good intent of the 419 “baiters” justify their activities? From the perspective of the scammers, the baiters are engaging in fraud. One might also question the cultural and moral implications of baiting.

See Chapter 13 for a good discussion of ethics in IT, and chapter 14 for an examination of global issues.

These web sites have additional information on advance fee fraud. Snopes.com is an excellent site that debunks urban legends and hoaxes. In the United States, the Secret Service maintains a page about these scams. The third link is a cache of the Secret Service site.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/nigeria.htm
http://www.secretservice.gov/alert419.htm
 http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=3869416205478&lang=en-US

The other three sites feature the work of baiters. If you are easily offended, please avoid these sites.

http://www.aa419.org
http://www.419eater.com
 http://www.419baiter.com

World: Scientist Bill McGuire claims that a volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands could spawn a killer giant tidal wave that would devastate the eastern USA, Western Africa, Spain, Portugal, and the Caribbean. No one is monitoring Cumbre Vieja, which last erupted in 1971. Sounds like a bad movie.