Smart Phone Cramming; Saber Rattling in Seoul; Is the Korean War on again? Is AI humanity’s greatest threat?

View 768 Friday, March 29, 2013

GOOD FRIDAY

 

Today’s LA Times has a story that has me going over my mobile phone bills.

FCC needs to stop ‘cramming’ on cellphones

The agency took steps against third-party charges on landline bills, but cellphone users still get hit by unauthorized charges — and phone providers get a cut.

David Lazarus

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20130329,0,2277464.column?page=1

Wen Chao received a text message on her iPhone the other day from something called Ringtunecloud.com. It offered mobile content, such as ring tones, for $9.99 a month.

Chao, 43, ignored it.

About an hour and a half later, she received a more ambiguous text: "You play the peacemaker for others when two friends go to war. Suggest a new activity to the parties involved, and you will get peace."

Figuring it might have been from a friend, Chao clicked it open and — what do you know? — it, too, was from Ringtunecloud.com.

So she did exactly what wireless companies advise customers to do. She called her provider, Verizon Wireless, and asked that Ringtunecloud.com be blocked from sending any more texts to her phone.

The Verizon rep agreed to do this, but informed Chao that a $9.99 monthly service charge already had been applied to her account — just because she had clicked on the text.

Phone companies are being asked why this is possible. Shouldn’t subscribers be required to opt in rather than opt out of paying fees for added services? Particularly if they never heard of the service and never wanted it? AT&T answered :

"Making it more difficult for a customer to purchase and consume third-party content not only risks cutting off customers from innovative products and from the convenience of their portable devices, it also potentially subjects a burgeoning industry of entrepreneurs and job creators to financial distress," AT&T said in its own comments to the FCC.

Verizon told the FCC that it would be too much of a hassle for people to have to lift the block any time they actually wanted a third-party service.

"This additional step would be inconvenient for customers and could deter them from participating in the mobile marketplace," the company said.

Of course the phone companies are getting a cut of the action, although they have declined to say how much of the fee they add on to the subscriber’s bill is paid to the “service provider” (which might be a subsidiary of the phone company itself) and how much the phone company retains as a fee for collecting it.

The FCC is conducting hearings on this matter with a view to creating regulations. My first inclination in cases like this is to leave it to the states, but that’s not possible here since the FCC has co-opted that domain. The FCC is holding hearings on the matter. I tend to agree with the conclusion Lazarus ends with:

Let the FCC know how you feel. Its email address is fccinfo@fcc.gov. And if you’re going to be in Washington, the FTC will hold a conference on wireless cramming May 8.

I also suggest you look at your mobile phone bill. Perhaps you don’t really care if you subject a burgeoning industry of entrepreneurs and job creators to financial distress, and would want to end paying for some service you don’t know you signed up for.

The United States sent B2 bombers from Whiteman AFB in Missouri to South Korea to bomb a target on an island off shore . As part of the demonstration of capability, the usually invisible B2 flew quite visibly over South Korea.

This came after a spate of threats from North Korea to put paid to American aggression. North Korea has long threatened to withdraw from the truce that ended the Korean War along with its non-aggression pact with South Korea. The NK fearless leader has now formally done so. In theory both South Korea and the United States are at war with North Korea, at least as I read the NK announcements.

Under the circumstances, sending the B2 flight falls under the definition of saber rattling. So, of course, do most of the North and South Korean actions. In the nasty old Imperial days this sort of thing might lead to a duel between officers chosen to represent their regiments, or some other symbolic resolution, but we don’t seem to have evolved anything to replace silly symbolic customs we got rid of. Perhaps we will have to have a battle, a la the Lion and the Unicorn, but it’s difficult to see how the town would survive when the Lion chases the unicorn all around the town. There might be neither plum cake nor drums.

North Korea held another war rally a few minutes ago.

I don’t know what will happen here. I do know it is insanity to stand by and take the first blow if an armed conflict is inevitable. The first rounds in an artillery duel – and classic air supremacy actions are very similar to artillery duels – are often decisive. It is unlikely that Israel would have been victorious in the 6 Day War if they had waited for a joint Jordanian-Syrian air and artillery strike before taking action. One you have taken out the other side’s forward air fields you have a great advantage in an air war. It can even be decisive. The same applies to artillery duels – if you can isolate the battle areas so that troops in them cannot be resupplied, you often win.

All that is historical observation. I am surely glad that I am not within range of North Korean artillery.

Sources in South Korea tell me that South Koran think tanks are already planning on how they can rebuild North Korea after NK starts the war and a SK-US alliance wins it.

On the other hand, a number of major SK corporations have quietly moved their headquarters out of Seoul to the south well out of range of the massed NK artillery along the border. The question becomes which side is most vulnerable to the mass destruction of war? War is a contest of will. Whose is strongest? And you might want to read Stefan Possony’s essay on surprise in war. It is a chapter in The Strategy of Technology.

Some problems solve themselves. There has been a mild spate of stories about armed police being asked to leave coffee shops and restaurants – at least one a Denny’s – because the establishment has a no-gun policy. I suggest that the simplest solution is to require that any such gun-free establishment be required to warn everyone, including the police, that this establishment doesn’t want them. A large sign saying “THIS IS A GUN FREE ZONE. POLICE NOT WELCOME INSIDE” would solve the problem. Potential armed robbers would of course obey the sign, so there would be no need of police, who could improve their own health and safety by ignoring any calls for succor from inside the shop. The problem, if it is a problem, would soon go away without expenditure of public resources.

And a serious warning from a long time reader/contributor:

 

Jerry,

Subj: Don’t become too dependent on the Internet. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21954636

Global internet slows after ‘biggest attack in history’

If/when the poop hits the rotary air circular you can count in this sort of thing being "normal". How many of you DEPEND on "Internet Banking" to pay your bills? Banks won’t have any better connectivity than anyone else. Cell phone? Same situation, just different "details". "Bundled" phone service? That uses the Internet. Now let’s add an EMP air burst over Iowa. You might have Internet (highly doubtful since "servers" are computers), but no home computer… and your car probably won’t run either.

 

By coincidence in the same batch of email was an invitation to participate on a seminar of science fiction writers on the dangers of Artificial Intelligence: is it the greatest threat to humanity (including asteroid strike)? I have to think about this question. Suppose all the AI in place now were to vanish?  Now imagine in one hundred years.