Old tech aids Egyptian protests

31 January 2011 Last updated at 06:56 ET

Fax machines, ham radio and dial-up modems are helping to avoid the net block imposed on Egypt.

On 27 January, Egypt fell off the internet as virtually all international connections were cut following an order from the government.

But older technologies proved their worth as net activists and protesters used them to get round the block.

Protesters are also circulating information about how to avoid communication controls inside Egypt.

Call charge

Dial-up modems are one of the most popular routes for Egyptians to get back online. Long lists of international numbers that connect to dial-up modems are circulating in Egypt thanks to net activists We Re-Build, Telecomix and others.

Dial-up numbers featured heavily in Twitter messages tagged with hashes related to the protests such as #egypt and #jan25.

ISPs in France, the US, Sweden, Spain and many other nations have set up pools of modems that will accept international calls to get information to and from protesters. Many have waived fees to make it easier for people to connect.

Few domestic lines in Egypt can call internationally to get at the modems, however. The Manalaa blog gave advice about how to use dial-up using a mobile, bluetooth and a laptop. It noted that the cost of international calls could be "pricey" but said it was good enough for "urgent communication". The advice was posted to many blogs, copied and sent out by many others.

We Re-Build, which campaigns for unmonitored internet access around Europe, said it was also listening on some ham radio frequencies and would relay any messages it received either by voice or morse code.

Fax machines were also drafted in by online activists and others who wanted to contact people inside Egypt and pass on information about how to restore net access.

The group of internet activists known as Anonymous was also using faxes to get information to students at several schools in the country. Anonymous activists have been faxing copies of cables from Wikileaks relating to Egypt in the hope that the information they contain about the Mubarak regime will be more widely distributed. It is not clear how much impact this is having, however.

Internal aid

While most net connections with Egypt have been cut, Egyptian ISP Noor seemed to stay online largely because it connects the country's Stock Exchange and many Western companies to the outside world.

Reports from Cairo suggest that many people and businesses who are signed up to Noor have removed the passwords from their wi-fi routers so others can piggy-back on their connection.

Elsewhere, a crowd-sourced document entitled 20 Ways to Circumvent the Egyptians Governments' Internet Block has compiled the best ways for Egyptians to keep communicating.

Some Egyptians reported that they could get at websites such as Google, Twitter and Facebook by using the numeric addresses for the sites rather than the English language name.

Mobile networks were not free of official interference. On Friday Vodafone Egypt said it, and all other operators, had been ordered to shut down services in some areas.

To get around this blockade, protesters circulated alternative message centre numbers throughout the weekend. Using these has allowed some locals to continue texting and using services such as Twitter.

Many people reported that they could avoid the block on Twitter by using a third-party updating program, rather than the official website, to receive and send messages.

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Microsoft warns on browser flaw

31 January 2011 Last updated at 08:54 ET

Microsoft has issued a "critical" warning over a newly-discovered flaw in Windows.

In a security advisory, the company warned of a loophole that could be used by malicious hackers to steal private information or hijack computers.

The bug potentially affects every user of the Internet Explorer web browser - around 900 million people worldwide.

Microsoft has issued a software patch to defend against attacks, and said it was working to develop a long-term fix.

The security advisory, which was published on Friday, details how the vulnerability can be used to manipulate users and take over their machines.

Although the flaw is actually inside Windows itself, it only appears to affect the way that Internet Explorer handles some web pages and documents.

Microsoft admitted that the problem meant users could easily be fooled into downloading malicious files by doing something as simple as clicking on a web link.

"When the user clicked that link, the malicious script would run on the user's computer for the rest of the current Internet Explorer session," wrote Microsoft representative Angela Gunn in a website announcement accompanying the advisory.

Once the computer had been hijacked, hackers could use it to steal personal data or send users to fake websites, she added.

"Such a script might collect user information, e.g e-mail, spoof content displayed in the browser or otherwise interfere with the user's experience."

Although Microsoft said it had seen no evidence that the glitch had already been exploited by hackers, it warned that research had shown it was a serious threat.

And while it has not been able to remove the bug itself, it issued a "fix it" security patch to block any attempts to use it.

All Windows users - particularly those who use Internet Explorer - are being urged to download the fix while the company's security team develop a way to plug the hole permanently.

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Easing pain with virtual reality

31 January 2011 Last updated at 04:10 ET

Burn patients in the US are being helped to escape the pain of burn injuries by immersing them in the virtual reality of a computer game during treatment.

Agony from severe burns can be one of the most intense and prolonged types of pain you can experience. And for many, the rehabilitation treatment is as painful as the initial burn.

Caleb Springer, aged 23, from Valdez in Alaska suffered second and third degree burns when he was set on fire in a motor bike accident.

Petrol spilled out of his scooter and a stray spark from a cigarette ignited it.

"I was engulfed in flames for probably two minutes. It was the worst pain I've ever felt, it was just excruciating. I looked down and just saw skin hanging from my legs," he said.

His burns were so bad he was airlifted from Alaska to a specialist centre in Seattle where his rehabilitation has been helped by pioneering treatment using a virtual reality computer game.

Escape from pain

SnowWorld, set in an icy 3D canyon, was developed by Professor Hunter Hoffman and Professor David Patterson at the University of Washington Harborview Burn Centre in Seattle.

It evolved out of the scientific advances in the last decade in understanding pain.

The aim of the game is "to make a very attention grabbing experience for the patient and basically to give them a place to escape from their pain" says Professor Hoffman.

Scientists have found many different elements can affect how we experience pain, including our emotions, environment, context and distractions.

"Because pain has such a strong psychological component to it, psychological treatments can be used to counteract the pain," said Prof Hoffman.

"Because humans are so visually dominant wherever you're looking typically that's where your attention is focused.

"(For patients) during wound care, when they're getting their bandages changed, they're looking at these different tools that the nurses are using to treat them, and just looking at those objects makes them anxious.

"They begin to associate objects in the room with high pain so you can imagine that day after day they start to develop psychological associations between the treatment room and pain, amplifying how much pain they experience."

Another world

Being immersed in SnowWorld puts a "curtain between the patient and reality", he explains.

Patients wear a helmet hooked up to the virtual world and wear noise cancelling headphones, cutting off all the sights and sounds associated with the painful treatment.

It is a fairly simple computer game. Patients can throw snowballs at various objects, including snowmen, igloos, mammoths, and penguins.

"When they put you in SnowWorld, the snowmen throw snowballs at you and you have to throw snowballs back at them," says Caleb Springer.

"If you hit the penguins, they freeze, and if you hit them a second time, they explode. There's a lot of action in it. You never stop to think about anything else."

The game is quite simple, intentionally, because patients could not concentrate on regular computer games.

The icy world was chosen, so patients would not be reminded of the fire that caused their burns.

"When I was in SnowWorld, I didn't think about the pain at all. There was pretty much no pain - there were at some points, but the most part there was no pain," said Caleb.

There is a limit to how much information the brain processes at any one time, so although Caleb's brain received exactly the same amount of pain signals, he did not register them.

"They basically become oblivious to what's happening in the hospital room," explains Professor Hoffman.

"There are other studies showing you feel less pain during music or watching movies, but this takes it to a much more stronger level, because it's so immersive.

"It isolates the patient from the real world, unlike any other media that's ever been tried. That's part of the reason we're getting such strong results".

Brain scans

Over the last two years, Prof Hoffman has been collecting brain scans from his patients.

Pain-related brain activity "lights up their brains like a Christmas tree when there's no virtual reality".

"When you compare it to pain stimuli when they were in virtual reality, some regions showed a 50% reduction in brain activity.

"This is consistent with the idea that there is so much attention devoted to SnowWorld that there is not enough attention available to process the pain signals anymore."

A growing number of burn centres around the world are showing interest in using SnowWorld with their patients, including hospitals in New York, Hawaii, Copenhagen and Holland

Caleb and SnowWorld feature in Horizon: The Secret World of Pain on BBC Two 31 January 2100 GMT.

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