The Paper Passion fragrance captures the odour of a freshly printed book, its maker claims, so if you share the late Ray Bradbury’s sentiments that e-books “smell like burned fuel”, perhaps a splash of the scent is the incentive you need to make the digital switch.

It may not have quite the same effect as a Jean-Baptiste Grenouille concoction, and any nerdy Apple fans are more likely to crowd round the stud who wears Cupertino “unboxing” cologne, but I’m sure there are plenty of bookworms out there who would be unconsciously lured to its literary seductiveness too.

The scent itself was created by perfumer Geza Schoen, who captured the odour as part of a Wallpaper* Magazine Handmade design exhibition in Milan. She says: “You have a book, you open it, there’s a bottle inside and it smells of a book. It might be quirky, but the idea has a simplicity, a linearity.”

Bottles of Paper Passion are now on sale and can be picked up for £70 each. Splash it all over. ®

When people add the words “military”, “grade”, “spy” and “imaging” into a story also containing the words “Google” and “Apple”, the main game is to sprinkle some search engine optimization fairy-dust into the piece as a hit magnet and/or click-collector thanks to a scary headline.

Here’s an example: Apple and Google, trying to out-map each other, are reportedly seeking “military grade” kit (says the Daily Mail and others) for aerial photography “able to scan objects down to four inches wide” (as ZDNet puts it), taken by “spy planes” (thank you to Tech2).

Is it instrusive? Certainly. Is it smart for a serial privacy invader like the Chocolate Factory and a conscienceless monolith like Apple to race each other to find nude sunbathers in their own backyards, all the world over? Certainly not.

Is it new technology? Nope. Is your place already in a high-res map captured with high 3D accuracy? Almost certainly.

“Military grade” often means “someone sold the kit to the military once”, or “someone hopes to sell the kit to the military”, or “this kit passed some vibration tests” and has no bearing on either the capability of aerial photography today, or who takes the most photographs.

If you don’t believe me, head to the NSW Department of Lands and take a look at the aerial photographs that already exist for the completely mundane purpose of survey information. Or, if you don’t want to do that, look at the photo that I downloaded.

Arrow indicates a four-inch feature captured in an aerial photograph available to the public.

Copyright: NSW Department of Lands, 2012

I haven’t invaded anybody’s privacy: as you can see, there are no humans in the photograph, and anyhow, it’s my house and I figure I can publish this pic as long as I respect the Department’s copyright (permission is given when you access the system).

In this quite mundane photograph, there’s an object “four inches wide” or thereabouts. I’ve even provided a pointer in the pic: a pipe running from the gutters to the water tank, and it’s about four inches wide.

(Note: this image has been shrunk to fit this page).

What about the other exciting angle to the story, that all this “military grade” stuff is going to build 3D models of cities?

Take a read of this, which describes LIDAR capture of Australian coastlines, to a vertical resolution of 10-15 cm (or, roughly – guess what? – four inches).

The kind of data that’s got people yelling “military spy technology!” is already routine (if expensive to buy). What’s cool (if that’s the right word) or at least new is the ability to combine the 3D models with realistic images, so that your Big Ben looks like you expect.

In other words: neither Apple nor Google are producing anything new by way of data collection. The “new” privacy invasion, if there is a new one, concerns who is collecting that aerial data, and the uses they intend for it. ®

The original advisory stated that vulnerable installations of F5’s BigIP and other systems allowed an attacker to log in as root, because the vulnerability exposed the device’s SSH private key. F5 responded earlier this month.

Since it’s only seven days since F5 issued its advisory – and the patch – it’s likely that unpatched systems still exist.

F5 describes the issue as “A platform-specific remote access vulnerability has been discovered that may allow a remote user to gain privileged access to affected systems using SSH. The vulnerability is caused by a configuration error, and is not the result of an underlying SSH defect.”

Today, exploit code has been posted to Github. That code purports to gain remote access to some of the affected F5 systems – its BigIP devices.

The vulnerability can be addressed either by users upgrading to a non-vulnerable version, or reconfiguring SSH access (instructions are provided at the F5 link).

The Register has sought comment from F5. ®

Megan Richards, acting deputy director general of Information Society and Media and also part of the Converged Networks and Services directorate, said it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if European data was held in data centres in the US.

“Theoretically, it shouldn’t matter where data is held as long as our rules apply,” Richards told The Reg at the Cloud Computing World Forum in London. “The legislation in the US is not so different from the legislation we have in the EU.”

Richards was talking about the new data protection legislation currently making its way through the European Parliament, which she is hoping to see implemented in the next two-and-a-half years.

“It usually takes a year to go through Parliament, usually,” she emphasised, “Then, after adoption, it’s supposed to come in in two years.”

The new data protection legislation is important to the European Cloud Computing Strategy because it will mean that all member states have the same rules instead of the current situation, where each country has adapted the less-binding directive in their own way.

“The advantage of legislation is that it applies to everyone,” Richards said.

The cloud strategy is another thing that’s expected to be adopted soon; at the moment it’s still being discussed at various levels, according to Richards. But she said that cloud was very important to Europe, especially in the current economic crisis.

“We really need to drive growth and jobs in the future,” she said. “One of the pillars of the EU 2020 strategy is the digital agenda, which has many actions to push growth forward in Europe, and we think cloud has great potential.”

Richards reckons cloud computing has the potential to deliver €700bn (£564bn) of economic benefit in the five biggest European economies and generate five million new jobs in the five largest member states.

But getting the cloud moving in Europe requires better broadband rollout, more standardised legislation and less fragmentation in markets, she said.

“That’s what cloud providers need,” Richards added. ®

The new study is to be presented at the MobiSys conference in the UK later this month. The researchers have extended their profiling to cover 187 apps, and found that 42 of them – more than 22 percent – had some kind of wakelock bug.

The problem is simple, says Purdue professor of electrical engineering Charlie Hu: programmers are human, and make mistakes. In juggling the various APIs they need to access to wake the phone up – for example, to receive an incoming call when the phone is asleep, or to check e-mail – they can leave the phone awake after the activity and drain the battery.

The Purdue group’s previous research identified bugs in newsreader apps, advertising tracking, and even the free version of Angry Birds (which devoted one-third of its unnecessary power consumption to GPS tracking). As noted at the time, I/O is a power hog and is often badly-handled by app developers.

Hu’s group uses a modified compiler to identify no-sleep bugs in software, and claims they can identify most, if not all, such bugs. ®

Home Secretary Theresa May unveiled her proposals for the UK’s rehashed internet super-snoop law today, which immediately led to the Home Office’s website collapsing.

At time of writing, the draft 117-page Communications Data Bill was unavailable online.

The Home Office proposed that the bill, which will now be scrutinised by a joint committee of MPs and peers as well as by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), would “replace the dozens of currently available powers with a single piece of legislation”.

The ISC said: “We will take evidence and examine the rationale behind the proposals and how rigorous the safeguards are to ensure the privacy of individuals.”

On RIPA, the Home Office said in its draft bill:

Law enforcement agencies – the police, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs – account for the overwhelming majority of annual requests for access to communications data under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (‘RIPA’) 2000.

They have access to the full range of communications data. Other authorities with investigative or public protection responsibilities are able to access communications data, but most do not have access to more sensitive forms of communications data, for example data regarding the location of a mobile phone.

Local authorities account for less than 0.5 per cent of total annual RIPA requests for communications data. Following the implementation of the Protection of Freedoms Act, they will only be able to access this data if approved by a magistrate.

Communications technologies and services are changing fast with more communications taking place on the internet using a wider range of services, including voice over internet, online gaming and instant messaging.

Communications data from these technologies is not as accessible as data from older communications systems like ‘fixed line’ telephones. Although some internet data is already stored by communication service providers, other data is neither generated nor obtained because providers have no business need for it.

This means that the police are finding it increasingly hard to use some types of communications data to investigate crime. To address this growing gap, the proposals set out here will require some communications service providers to obtain and store some communications data which they may have no business reason to collect at present.

Nothing in these proposals will authorise the interception of the content of a communication. Nor will it require the collection of all internet data, which would be neither feasible, necessary nor proportionate. We will extend existing safeguards regarding data retention, access and oversight. And we will remove other statutory powers with weaker safeguards under which communications data can currently be accessed by public authorities.

The proposed regime would replace Part 1 Chapter 2 of the RIPA and Part 11 of the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001. A move that would represent a major rejig of current surveillance law.

As The Register reported earlier, ISPs will be expected to retain communications data by logging every website visit, as well as any access made by its customers to email accounts, Facebook and difficult-to-tap tech like peer-to-peer communications such as Skype for a minimum of 12 months.

But the Home Office will foot the bill, which it estimates will cost at least £1.8bn over the course of 10 years.

It added: “Benefits from this investment are estimated to be £5bn – 6.2bn over the same period.”

The £1.8bn figure is only marginally less than the one floated by the previous Labour government – prior to it abandoning its own Internet Modernisation Programme (IMP) in light of protests against such an unloved legislative overhaul.

ISPs will be able to appeal to a technical advisory board under dispute procedures if they complain that such requests for data are “unnecessarily onerous”.

Secretary General of UK ISP trade group, ISPA, Nicholas Lansman told El Reg:

ISPA has concerns about the new powers to require network operators to capture and retain third party communications data. These concerns include the scope and proportionality, privacy and data protection implications and the technical feasibility.

Under the proposals, the police, the National Crime Agency, spooks and the taxman would be able to “apply for access” to such data, the Home Office said.

It added:

“Hundreds of public bodies – including local authorities – currently have access to communications data, but will not be covered by the new laws unless Parliament agrees their use is vital to tackling crime and protecting the public.”

However, only a tiny number of comms data requests originate from local councils – so such a proposed change is likely to have a minimal impact. May confirmed this morning that 500,000 such requests from all British authorities are made each year. Arguably, that figure will balloon under any Communications Data Act.

The Home Secretary, in a canned statement, said:

Communications data saves lives. It is a vital tool for the police to catch criminals and to protect children.

If we stand by as technology changes we will leave police officers fighting crime with one hand tied behind their backs.

Checking communication records, not content, is a crucial part of day-to-day policing and the fingerprinting of the modern age – we are determined to ensure its continued availability in cracking down on crime.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) “will keep under review the security and integrity of the communications data retained,” the Home Office said.

The ICO noted such a move would be a burden placed upon its already swamped staff. It said:

If the Information Commissioner is to be in a position to ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act, in respect of security of retained personal information and its destruction after 12 months, the ICO will need appropriately enhanced powers and the necessary additional resources.

Clauses were added to the draft bill and confirmed in the Queen’s Speech, following opposition to May’s proposals from junior Coalition members, the LibDems. They include measures such as consultation requirements, data security and integrity, destruction of data and other safeguards.

LibDem MP Julian Huppert, who led his party’s charge against May’s initial plans, welcomed the opportunity to debate the draft bill out in the open, but he remains worried about certain aspects of the proposals.

“My immediate concern is Clause 1. As written, it gives the Secretary of State far too broad a power. It allows data collection exercises that are perfectly reasonable – but would also allow pervasive black boxes that would monitor every online information flow, an idea which is clearly unacceptable.

“This must be tightened up urgently. The accompanying text is much better – but I don’t think we should pass broad laws on a promise from government that they will never abuse them.

“This absolutely must be changed: it is unacceptable as it currently stands.”

A copy of the draft bill isn’t currently available via the Home Office website, which we’re informed suffered some technical difficulties. Readers can get their mitts on it here [PDF]. ®

Kodak has accused Apple of “frivolous” claims to its patents, saying that Cupertino’s only purpose is to delay the camera company’s sale of those patents as part of its bankruptcy proceedings.

The fruity firm responded today with its own new filing, alleging that Kodak is just trying to use the bankruptcy court to gallop through the patent proceedings – which Apple claims had already started before Kodak went bust.

Kodak has said that Apple is only interested in the 10 patents in question, which are part of a “digital-capture” portfolio of over 700 patents, now that the firm is on the ropes financially. The firm said that Apple was trying to use its deep pockets to litigate Kodak all the way out of its bankruptcy agreements, which include selling off its IP.

Apple claims the patent dispute started in 2010, two years before Kodak sank into the red, and the camera company is trying to use its bankruptcy to give Apple’s rights “short shrift”.

“To facilitate their sale (along with over a thousand other patents) as part of its Bankruptcy proceedings, Kodak seeks to quickly extinguish Apple’s interests in the disputed patents, without a fair process and in a tribunal lacking experience with patent disputes,” the iPhone-maker said in its filing. “While Apple is amenable to a reasonably-expedited proceeding to resolve this dispute, it is entitled to have these issues properly adjudicated in an appropriate forum.”

Apple says that the bankruptcy court doesn’t have the expertise necessary to hear a patent case and even if it did, it’s not legally entitled to do so, because the litigation started before Kodak was circling the drain.

The bankruptcy court also requires all parties to agree before it is allowed to use a jury, and a jury is needed to hear damages and contract claims. Since Apple won’t be consenting to a jury, it says the case needs to move to the district court so that it can be properly heard.

All the fuss is over 10 patents developed back in the ’90s when Apple and Kodak were collaborating. Kodak says the ideas were its own and that it had every right to hang onto them, while Apple says Kodak patented the ideas behind its back, and claims they were actually technologies that the fruity firm had shown Kodak when the two companies were working together.

Both Apple and Kodak are claiming to have triumphed in an International Trade Commission decision on one of the patents and are equally strident in their ownership claims.

But the clock is ticking for Kodak, which needs to get some money in its coffers under the terms of its bankruptcy. Apple is alleging that urgency has led to Kodak’s attempts to trample all over it.

“Instead of litigating its claims against Apple in an appropriate forum, Kodak is trying to strip Apple of its rights in the disputed patents through a rushed proceeding in the Bankruptcy Court that would afford Apple much less in the way of discovery and due process,” Apple complained.

“To make matters worse, Kodak is trying to enjoin Apple from asserting any claim to ownership of the disputed patents, lest this ‘create uncertainty’ that would discourage potential bidders.”

Kodak had been planning the patent sale for July and August and expected to announce a winning bidder on 13 August. ®

A spokesperson said the banking group had been working overnight to fix the problems but that there was no precise timeline available: “We’re going for as fast as possible,” the spokesbod quipped.

A statement released mid-morning seemed to rule out the possibility that it would be fixed by the end of today:

We are continuing to experience technical issues with our systems, which is impacting a large number of our customers. As a result, money credited to accounts overnight may not be appearing on balances today.

RBS Group – which also runs Ulster Bank – stressed that the glitch was a purely technical issue. The screw-up has been pinned down to a flaw with payment-processing software, and primarily means that bank balances don’t register inbound payments.

However, the knock-on effect means that a whole range of services seem to be unavailable too: customers also reported being unable to transfer money between their own bank accounts.

The RBS Group has promised that customers will not lose out financially: “We will ensure that no customers will be permanently out of pocket as a result.” However many have already suffered big problems from the freeze-up in funds.

Back-end sorts have been weighing in with different opinions on what caused the crash. Michael Allen, director of IT service management at Compuware, said:

The problem is that IT systems have become vastly more complex. Delivering an e-banking service could be reliant on 20 different IT systems. If even a small change is made to one of these systems, it can cause major problems for the whole banking service, which could be what’s happened at NatWest. Finding the root cause of the problem is probably something NatWest is struggling with because of the complexity of the IT systems in any bank.

The Queen has been unaffected by the glitches, for although Coutts (Her Maj’s bank) is part of the RBS Group, it uses different, presumably superior software, that appears to work.

RBS has cut back on permanent IT staff in the past few years: trimming 1,000 people in 2010 alone. In the effort to keep “frontline staff” available, the tech department was one area where the axe fell when the banking group was slashing the headcount. ®

Such was the race to give the appearance of being cutting-edge, they sometimes found themselves announcing products that existed only in diagrams on a boardroom flipchart. Surprisingly often, nothing ever came of these vapourware products: the engineering challenges of their mass-production proving uncompetitive and their technologies absorbed into other projects or sold off by liquidation administrators.

Microsoft’s new keyblet

I don’t wish to suggest that Microsoft Surface is truly vapourware, but surely it’s suspicious that it’s announcing a product that no one’s going to be able to buy for half a year.

One supposes that Microsoft intends to create a buzz and get us talking about their forthcoming (new) foray into tablet computers. Yet the problem with jumping the gun – apart from the ‘false start’ accusations that lead on from this metaphor – is that commentators are left with a void to fill. Lacking a physical product to test, all we can do is talk bollocks based on conjecture.

This, as you know, is my specialty.

First, let me say that I don’t care a hoot about the provenance of the name ‘Surface’ – ho-ho, it used to be a table, so fucking what? Making fun of a name tells us nothing about the product.

Take ‘Metro’.

“We call it Metro because it’s modern and clean.” Oh, and here’s me thinking they called it Metro because it’s populated by young Algerians brandishing flick-knives and smells of wee. It’s just a word to put on the packaging and its actual meaning has no significance. After all, what does the word ‘pod’ have to do with playing MP3 files?

Doomed to repeat the mistakes of History?

What I find funny is how the marketing spiel is written for products that don’t exist, because the writers have no choice other than to make a big deal of nothing in particular.

“The addition of the Micro SD card slot means you can bring your entire movie and music collection with you on vacation.” What, it plays VHS videos and C90 cassettes?

Next page: Surface tension

Komonews.com reports that police were called to reports of a street fight last Saturday. When they arrived they saw a number of people run from the scene, before finding a man “covered in blood and holding his head and screaming in pain”.

When asked what had happened to him, the distressed victim said “It was a bunch of leprechauns.”

The diminutive Irish expatriates had allegedly become enraged because the man was dancing with a girl.

The victim was unable to provide any further distinguishing information about the violent gang, except that one of them was wearing “a white tank top”.

After delivering this vital piece of information, the victim was taken to Harborview medical centre with “multiple head injuries and cuts and bruises on his face, back, knuckles and elbows”.

The story has now gone viral, putting the fear of God into Seattle, and quite possibly holding up development on Windows 8.

However, it is entirely possible that the case is entirely one of mistaken identity, and El Reg thinks it can point out the real culprits.

Consider the evidence. First of all, leprechauns are supposed to be solitary creatures, wearing beards, hats and coats. Secondly, unlike their larger countrymen they are not renowned for traveling, preferring to stay close to their cobbling clientele and mythical crocks of gold, typically located at the end of a rainbow, somewhere in Ireland.

The Seattle victim in question was assaulted by a gang, at least one of whom was wearing a white tank top. And, as for motive, the gang was enraged when the victim danced with a certain girl.

So, clearly the police should be hunting down a known gang from Southern California, who go by the street names of of Doc, Happy, Bashful, Sneezy, Grumpy, Sleepy, and Dopey. ®