Hiatus
The Spectrum blog will be on a break until March 2012. In the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter (@dw_scitech) or check our daily news coverage at dw.de/science, and of course, listen to the show: dw.de/spectrum. Thanks!
Spectrum 40 (2011) – October 18, 2011
Spectrum 39 (2011) – October 11, 2011
Estonian tech entrepeneur reflects on impact of Apple in Soviet era
Future Now: Profile of skin cell researcher
Changing German politics from the inside – and online
UK scientists upgrade the lie detector
Researcher wins Ig Nobel prize for study of urination and self-control
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London Olympics braces itself for cyber attacks
If track superstar Usain Bolt breaks another world record at this summer’s London Olympics, you don’t want to have to ask him to do it again because of a glitch in the timing system.
That’s how Paul Deighton, the head of the games’ organizing committee, summed up the need for foolproof computer systems as the Olympics’ Technology Operations Centre (TOC) opened Monday in London’s Canary Wharf district. 450 workers will use 180 servers to record scores, distribute info to the media, and perform other tasks during the 16 days of the Olympics and 12 days of the Paralympics.
TOC is planning to brace itself with simulated cyber attacks in March and May. A “shadow team” of 100 people will descend on an isolated center to initiate worst-case scenarios such as disconnecting servers and launching viruses and denial of service attacks. Staff will try to fend them off during simulations of past competitions.
London Games CIO Gerry Pennell told the BBC that the UK has learned from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when China underwent a jaw-dropping 12 million online attacks per day. Pennell said to minimize the potential from a denial of service attack, the London Games’ website is distributed, while “mission-critical systems [are] quite isolated from anything web-facing.”
About one-third of the London Olympics’ roughly 2.3 billion euro budget has been spent on technology. Organizers said they were unaware of any specific threat.
Google partners with German media, pols on massive oral history project
Google Germany has teamed up with German public broadcaster ZDF and several other German organizations to create a unique oral history database called “Memory of the Nation” (or “Gedächtnis der Nation,” in the German). A ZDF team travelling across the country has already collected more than 8,000 hours of interview footage with Germans who bore witness to events from before World War One, through the start of a single currency for the eurozone, and up to today.
The project, which is entirely in German, is up and running on a special YouTube channel that has categories for historical events, special themes, and prominent personalities. Even if you don’t know German, this sample can give you an idea of the high quality production:
For readers who do know some German, here’s a link to our German counterpart’s article on the project.
A Google release says the idea for “Memory of the Nation” came from the Shoah Foundation set up by film maker Stephen Spielberg to archive Holocaust survivors’ experiences. Indeed, one of the most prominent themes in “Memory of the Nation” is the Holocaust, with dozens of interviews on the topic.
“Memory of the Nation” includes a feature for users to submit their own video testimonials, subject to review by an editorial board.German President Christian Wulff is patron of a non-profit group set up to head the project. According to German newspaper Die Zeit, “Memory of the Nation” received 2 million euros from private donors to fund the project’s first four years.
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