Technology Bites!

Trying to figure-out what all the hype is about over iPhones and other Smart phones lately. Like many, I reached my own conclusion before even touching one. Touch screens have to be a PITA to keep clean. Finger prints on my cellphone screen drive me nuts as it is, I couldn't imagine using it for the interface. It would be a real mess, all that touching.

Technology has been chewing-on businesses and governments alike over the past month or so.

Google, recently bitten by a zero-day exploit in China, has been very vocal about this exploit and is threatening to pull out of China. This, in turn, has the U.S. government requesting a response from China on cyber security. Can't blame the U.S. government for making a case, as IP's from China have been traced as the source of several attacks over the past year or so. Needless-to-say, China is not happy about the bad press. In fact, they've been quite vocal in their denials and have basically told the U.S. "Don't mess with our business".

Having a propular product can mean boon or bust for a software company. According to security firm McAfee (see report), Adobe will become the top target for hackers in 2010, surpassing Microsof Office products.

Hackers tend to attack the most popular products to achieve maximum impact. That usually makes Microsoft the primary target for exploit. But, Microsoft's dominance in some areas is dwindling. As other products reach levels that compare or surpass Microsoft's, they become exploit tools for hackers.

Adobe has acknowledged their products have seen an increase in attacks and have begun to respond by decreasing report-to-patch times. The products primarily used for exploits include Flash and Adobe Reader.

Adobe is not alone, other products experienced an increase in hacker exploit activity in 2009. Namely, Firefox and Apple's Quicktime.

2010 looks like it will be a busy year for anti-virus/security firms. A good New Year's Resolution would be to purchase good quality anti-virus/anti-spam/anti-malware tool (or tools) and schedule daily updates of your definition file(s). It may not be a "total" answer, but it might reduce a "bite" to a "nibble".

While the inane spats of YouTube commencers may not be representative, the internet has certainly sharpened the tone of debate. The most raucous sections of the blogworld seem incapable of accepting sincerely held differences of opinion; all opponents must have "agendas".

Whether or not you agree with the above comment isn't the point. It's how we express ourselves while on the Internet that displays our humanity, or rather our in-humanity. We see this well displayed in recent commercials targeted at our children. Ya know the cyber-bullying commercials. "If you wouldn't say it in person...". I think we can all agree that if we have commercials on this topic, a problem must exist.

10 years ago, when the Internet was still young, many of us joked that WWW didn't stand for "World-Wide Web", it stood for "Wild, Wild West". Anonymity seems to bring-out the worst in people. Back then, being "flamed" by another user was insulting, but common. The fear of reprisal was non-existent. Many people "shot from the hip".

The great irony of technology is it's ability to benefit one group while at the very same time hindering another. China and Iran have recently discovered the power of technology might exceed their ability to censor their citizen's Internet activity. All this is very evident in the myriad of news articles released in the past 2 weeks.

On June 12th, the United States makes the switch from analog to digital broadcast signals for television transmission. This has been in-the-works since the late 1990's. The switch was origianlly scheduled for February 2009. It was rescheduled to June because our government didn't think everyone was ready. This is something that has been thoroughly advertised, even over digital TV signals, for more than a year. If you live here, how could you not know?

Yesterday was a sad day for the Aeronautics industry and at least 228 people. An Air-France A330 Airbus was lost over the Atlantic Ocean somewhere between Rio de Janeiro and Paris last night.

Air France said the A330 plane sent an automatic message at 0214 GMT indicating an electrical circuit failure. There were no other official details on the possible cause of the crash.

Lightning strikes are fairly common but planes built out of metal like the A330 are designed to be able to shake them off.

The massive current passes along the metal fuselage and is allowed to arc towards earth without causing harm.

The idea is based on a principle known as a Faraday Cage, which protects passengers inside a mesh of conducting material.

It appears Faraday's Cage might not always work. In the worst previously recorded incident blamed on lightning, 113 people were killed in 1962 on a Boeing 707, coincidently also operated by Air France.

My heart goes out to the family and friends of the lost loved ones. In the end I hope technology is not to blame on this incident. Unfortunately, it seems pretty obvious technology bites again.

Low-Tech solutions are somehow cool! Could something as simple as paint help mitigate Global Warming?

Scientist have been exploring solutions, all seemingly grand and high-tech like; green energy, renewable energy, solar solutions, hydro solutions and carbon bottling just to name a few. Politicians get involved to debate costs, financing and various other facets. Somehow special interest groups get involved and manage to dilute the objective with their own self-serving twists.

Steve Chu, U.S. Energy Secretary, has delived what appears to be an all too logical solution: Paint your roof white! You've gotta love using old technology to solve new problems. Sounds like a great starting point to me. Paint the roads white too if that'll help. It's been a long time since someone in the government had a good, simple, cheap idea!

What's really hard to believe is that some people have issues with the notion. Apparently a similar initiative in California to require car roofs to be more reflective sparked political controversy. Some motor-heads don't want to sacrific their freedom of choice to own a black car. In the end, California may get nowhere on  this. Will California politicians have the intestinal fortitude to speak for the good of the many, rather than the good of the few? That's what I'll be watching.

In early 2005, when I was assigned as an assistant battalion intelligence officer with 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division in Baghdad, our section noncommissioned officer in charge introduced me to the various systems in our section. When we got to a gray Panasonic Toughbook laptop, he explained that it was an All Source Analysis System-Light, or ASAS-L, part of some vaguely defined “intelligence data-basing tool.” In reality, he said, it was used primarily as a word processor.