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SCI/TECH ARCHIVES -- FEBRUARY 2010
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FEBRUARY 22, 2010 -- FEBRUARY 28, 2010 A TWITTER FIRST: BIG TROUBLE FOR TWIT WHO POSTED AIRPORT BOMB HOAX
He actually threatened to blow up the airport, this is a plain and simple fact, go into a bank and tell the assistant that you have a gun and see what "freedom of speech" does for you. He made a big, stupid mistake, but other people have threatened explosions and murders via similar methods and carried out their threats, you must treat the threats equally, Eric Harris had put up threats on his website before the Columbine massacre, if these threats were taken seriously then maybe he wouldn't have killed so many people. You cannot blame the authorities for over-reacting when under-reaction could not only result in loss of life but also the public pointing fingers at them, now if they'd chased him down a tube station and shot him in the face a few times then maybe they should have some criticism, but not for this. Read the article THE REGISTER/Twitter "airport bomb hoax twit" charged <> "As reported in the Doncaster Free Press." And what's with all the love of censorship and the acceptance of this kind of insane officialdom pomposity? Quick assessment: do people blow up airports due to snow-closures or as revenge for poor administration or is this hyperbole? Do serious bombers offer to cancel their mass-murder plans if the snow is cleared from the runway in time for their holidays? A random twitter about getting the airport open is not the same as sending a letter to the airport saying you're you've put a bomb somewhere in the building because the local mullah told you that all westerners must die. It isn't a hoax - he isn't pretending he's going to do it, its hyperbole! Just because officials have been making fools of themselves in the recent past by exaggerating any an all threats and handing out out-of-proportion punishments is no reason to allow them to go on doing so. They need reigning in and reprimanding for wasting public funds and paying attention to twitter. Read the article THE REGISTER/Twitter "airport bomb hoax twit" charged CYBER SHOCKWAVE: "DR. STRANGELOVE 2011" OR REAL AND PRESENT DANGER?
I work for the government in information security and I can honestly say the U.S. has been in a World War in cyberspace for the last 10 years or so, and we are losing badly. In fact, to have any chance of winning, one almost has to change sides. When a company announces a major new service they are offering, or a new product line, or any major financial news that will raise their stock levels, you will often see cyber attacks take place against their closest competitor within a few days, which further drives up the stocks of the first company. These countries are also heavily responsible for most of the botnets that take over individual computers to be used as cyber slaves. Read the article NPR/Is the U.S. ready for a cyberwar? <> China is actually in a far better position: the vast majority of their critical infrastructure in not connected to a computer network. The West (generally), and the US in particular, has sacrificed security for convenience, and will likely pay a steep price for this at some point in the foreseeable future. For example: Western train signaling systems are highly networked, and have effectively no security (against a competent attacker) - it would be trivial for a competent attacker to hack a train signal network and cause serious problems. The train corporations have no interest in fixing it; they won't even admit that the issue exists, and government security services are generally filled with largely incompetent people that are poorly informed (at least the people in decision making positions). Read the article CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR /Cyber Shockwave cripples computers nationwide (sorta) <> Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security who played the "cyber coordinator" on Tuesday, said that the private sector was not prepared to defend against a cyber act of war and that the government needed to play a role. ".. You have to be kidding !! The private sector is on the cutting edge of cyber vulnerabilities. It is the Govt. Arms and agents that fall behind due to governmental roadblocks and (necessary) protection of citizens privacy and rights. Read the article WASHINGTON POST/War game reveal U.S. lacks cyber-crisis skills
FEBRUARY 15, 2010 -- FEBRAURY 21, 2010 COLD CASE: MALARIA NOT MURDER FELLED "FRAIL" BOY-KING TUT
Tut and other exhibits of Egyptian antiquity never fail to fascinate. Their artistic skill and craftsmanship rival anything made today. In fact, it's a shame that even with all our science and technology, we have come to eschew quality for disposability. We learn about the ancient pharaohs from their tombs of wealth and treasures... 3,000 years from now they'll learn about us from our landfills of garbage. That's progress for you! Read the article CNN NEWS/ Malaria, genetic diseases plagued King Tut <> Three thousand years after my death, I hope nobody checks my medical records and publishes them on the Internet. Read the article CNN NEWS/ Malaria, genetic diseases plagued King Tut IS COMPUTER ENGINEER BARBIE A PINK GIRL OR A GEEK GIRL?
There's actually two groups of women in computing: the pink girls and the geek girls. They manage an uneasy truce (or don't) in CS departments everywhere. The Barbie seems like a result of this... there's the pink laptop, and the leggings... but there's also the glasses and the binary on the shirt. "Geek Chic" is something I can live with. Read the article PARENTDISH/The votes are in: Barbie will be a ....computer engineer! SHOULD COMPUTERS BE MORE FORGETFUL?
While I think the idea is an interesting one, it's also fundamentally flawed. That blog post you mentioned? Yeah, it gets deleted after a year, sure, but not the cached copies, the comments others made, etc. Read the article ARS TECHNICA/Teaching computers how to forget <> Computers tend to forget things to by becoming obsolete. There are stories from NASA about trying to recover data from the original moon landings and so forth that are stored on devices that are no longer manufactured or no longer work. The data may not be "forgotten" technically, as it is still stored, but the inability to access it seems to be functionally equivalent. Read the article ARS TECHNICA/Teaching computers how to forget
BUZZING THE BUZZ ABOUT GOOGLE BUZZ
Competition is always a good thing for the consumer. It forces competing products and companies to innovate and come out with the best consumer satisfaction. One-Social-Network-to-Rule-Them-All doesn't sit well with most people. I, for one, deplore Facebook's blatant disregard for user's privacy - burying settings, making them obscure and even changing them on people under the guise of 'improved privacy settings'. Facebook has always been the blow-up doll for the [Ministry of] Advertisers and that is why the privacy of users is compromised (I'm not forgetting the millions who blindly post without thinking of the consequences). Google has a more inherent sense of earned trust in many of its user's eyes - justified or not. Personally, I'm not big on internet social networking but regardless, this is Google's opportunity to develop a platform that could fill in the gaps that Facebook will not, and so I welcome the Buzz introduction for competition's sake. Read the article PC WORLD/Facebook must tell Google to Buzz Off (Or else) <> Obviously people will ask "why bother with Buzz, we already have Facebook and Twitter," but that's rather the point. It's ridiculous to have to use two tools when one would do just fine. Buzz does a good job of blending the functionality of Facebook and Twitter whilst adding unique capabilities for mobile and email integration. It drives me batty trying to keep up with so many social media channels. Since it appears that Buzz will act in part as a tool to consolidate social media interaction, I'd say that this is a strong move. It may not appeal to everyone, but Google has to do something now to offer an alternative to Facebook's closed architecture. Read the article COMPUTERWORLD./Google Buzz buzzkill
Hooray, now Google can track and store not only people's emails, but also their photos, interests and thoughts. And, as the Onion presciently predicted, my refusal to put my personal information into Google products will actually result in social exclusion as millions of sheeple flock to give their personal information to a private corporation which by definition has its own interests, not theirs, at heart. Read the article BOINGBOING/Google launching Google Buzz <> Googler here. There's no way being lost at all. Buzz (hate the name) is incredible for enterprise (hate that name too) communication. Read the article ARS TECHNICA/Google launches Buzz to rein in social media overload
FEBRUARY 8, 2010 -- FEBRUARY 14, 2010 TAKING AN AIRCRUISE IN A FABULOUS FLYING MACHINE OF THE FUTURE
Look at the development of traditional commercial air travel. At first long distance commercial air travel was only for the very wealthy. A trip across the Pacific on a flying boat would cost upwards of $10k in today's money, one-way. As technology progressed tickets became cheaper, but even with the dawn of the Jet Era, to be a "Jet setter" required you to be independently wealthy. It took some time for technology to develop to make air travel really affordable for the common man. Now the question is, who would really want to spend 90 hours crammed into a cattle-car version of one of these. If they could make one that was like a Amtrak Superliner-sleeper as far as economy and comfort, I could see paying for a flight on one. It would be pretty neat. Read the article POPULAR SCIENCE/Luxury eco-zeppelins will fly future passengers around the world <> I love the idea of a relatively slow moving air cruiseship, and if they had decent success (before the Hindenburg) back in the 1930s, you would think we could figure out a safer way to control the hydrogen. I would love to take an air cruise over the Amazon rain forest. They could even figure out baskets that could lower to the ground when the airship was anchored down, allowing people to disembark in places where a plane couldnt land. Awesome idea. Read the article CNN/Could we be staying in floating hotels of the future? BYE-BYE BIRDIE -- SUN CEO SCHWARTZ TWEETS RESIGNATION
Financial crisis Stalled too many customers CEO no more Resigning with a haiku is so classy! How many executives write poetry at all, much less resign from their jobs with poetry? Read the article NEW YORK TIMES/Sun's chief executive tweets his resignation Communal I.P. Read the article BARRONS/Sun's Jonathan Schwartz: The haiku resignation tweet Oracle shuts down Read the article HUFFINGTON POST/Sun CEo Schwartz tweets resignation in haiku Idealism Read the article U.K. GUARDIAN/Jonathan Schwartz tweets his last goodbye to Sun Microsystems
FEBRUARY 1, 2010 -- FEBRUARY 7, 2010 WHAT RECESSION? INTERNET 419 SCAMMERS NETTED $9.3 BILLION IN 2009 419 READ THE REPORT . Read the article ARS TECHNICA/(Suckers) Victims lost $9 billion to scammers in 2009 <> Although its hard for me to understand how anyone falls for this nonsense, it doesn't actually surprise me since there are many computer illiterate and just generally ignorant people in the world. A mother of an old roommate of mine actually fell for the "We found a virus on you're computer, buy this software to get rid of it" pop up. She was a real ignorant nutter, but that is who they shoot for. A co-worker that I work with currently is an old man who can barely grasp using a computer and found a Nigerian email and asked me what it was; he was very confused wondering why a Nigerian would email him and clicked on the link that was on it before he asked me about it. I told him to delete it cause it was a scam; I am not sure if he still really understands though. Read the article ARS TECHNICA/(Suckers) Victims lost $9 billion to scammers in 2009 THE iPAD HAS LANDED ON THE SEA OF EXPECTATION
I don’t think any of you “yawners” are seeing the big picture here. These are the first footsteps forward in developing small, tablet like computers with all the functions and more of a computer today. This, as well as the iPod, and iPhone (and other stuff that is non-apple) are all setting the stage for a new era of technology. Remember the first Mac? it was a box that was able to do the same thing a type writer could. It basically electronified the typewriter and aside being a base for a new market and technological revolution, was an overpriced luxury. But it was a basis for the personal computer. Now you take this creation, a half inch thin tablet, with a few more features (than the iPhone,) many more features on the way that could end up revolutionizing modern computers, and you yawn. Sure, this may not be the best thing since sliced bread, but it’s making steps towards that. And that’s more than any of you can say you’re doing. Read the article WIRED/ Apple's special table event live
This is just a glorified super sized iPhone/iTouch. I have a hard time calling this a computer. It depends heavily on the App Store for application and other stuff. Unless it runs OSX, people will be buried in a lot of the shovelware that exists on the App Store. As much as Jobs picks on netbooks, they are able to run Windows applications and aren't confined to applications only available from a single source (i.e. iTunes). I see the iPad having some people running to the store to buy it, but I think a lot of people might think this is another Newton or iTV. For now, I'll stick with my iPhone. No real need to get this super sized device since it doesn't really offer anything that I need or feel make it worth the extra price. I personally think Apple pre-announced this a little to early in an attempt to take some focus away from Windows 7 and some upcoming Microsoft based tablet products. I'll give him credit, the press coverage for this has been insane. Read the article CNET/Apple's iPad touches a nerve in Redmond <> I think they have got winner here. Yes, it's a big iPod Touch but at that size the books and, importantly, newsprint looks so much better. Video too. The App Store will evolve to accommodate the larger screen size (but scaling up of existing apps shouldn't be too bad). Yes, you can plug in a keyboard and bluetooth is there too. The accessories look cool too. I especially like the cover which can double up as a mounting stand if you want to display pics/video etc to more people.
It's a serious alternative to a laptop and is a synthesis of the MacBook Air and iPod Touch. It looks gorgeous and the pricing is really keen. $499? That is really not bad for a 1st Gen product. Read the article MACWORLD/Apple puts an end to tablet rumors with Ipad <> I think what was downplayed today is the potential for this device to be a great laptop replacement/adjunct for college students. A better e-book app that provides more functionality than just reading, bookmarking, and minimal notes would be a boon for this potential market. The ability for textbook writers to incorporate audio, video, internet updates to its usual text laden product would be a significant improvement. Instead of ten books, buy an iPad (I still hate the name) and load them up with a years worth of books. However one still needs to be able to take notes and touchscreen typing just doesn't cut it. Maybe a foldable portable keyboard like what was available for the Palm PDA would be just right. Read the article CNET/CRAVE/ Should the Apple iPad be considered a computer?
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