Blog Currents - 11-May-2011

I start this week with an oversight on my part that caused me to lose most of this month’s ADSL bandwidth. It all started when I received a throttle warning from my ISP. Only half way through the month and I had used 80% of my bandwidth for on peak. My normal response was to be careful but two days later I was up to 93%.

I knew this was wrong and my first thought was someone was hijacking my WiFi connection. I started checking but no other connections but mine over the past 24 hours. The I heard baby sounds coming from my notebook speakers. Since nothing was running I knew that was wrong. Jumping to the task manager and finding out what was using CPU uncovered a file name I didn’t know. I stopped it and looked dup the executable, it was a Worm.  For some reason I thought I had installed my trusty Vipre on the notebook but wither I hadn’t or it has been removed. Reinstalling found where the Worm was hiding, removed it and protection was established. The moral here is that when it comes to malware take nothing for granted. Remember to check from time to time that the system is protected and that everything is up-to-date.

So according to a bunch of groups, e.g. Gizmodo, it isn’t really an issue that Apple, Microsoft and Google have been collecting data from your mobile device. Apple has or will be issuing a patch to correct this minor “oversight,”  Google says that users have been warned and can opt out and Microsoft, well Microsoft will probably just keep doing what it has been, like it always does.

The position of those like Gizmodo is that yes data is being collected and yes it is being sent back to the vendors but that it is all being anonymized so stop complaining or worrying about it. In response to this I have one word for you, Sony. Their recent hacking experience only emphasizes that someone could break into any one of these sites and grab the data before it gets anonymized and then they have all the data they want.

Then there are the WiFi hotspots that are often used to connect this data. People can also break into to each individual data collection system at this point. In some cases it isn’t even illegal to do so as the Google StreetView audits have shown.  Also despite what the vendors say, being something drafted by the legal department and then spun by Marketing we don’t really know what their intent is.

In say Australia it comes down to what is in the respective Acts e.g. privacy and telecommunications. In the latter it is fairly clear on what info can be collected and sent. For location based services this is the phone number for provision of a location based service. In the case of Google et. al. there is more than the phone number being sent.  Elsewhere it also states that they cannot use this information even if they have collected it. Since the info is being used, even if anonymized then there appears to be a contravention. You can check your own local rules and regulations on this one.

So are the carriers and service providers breaking the law in Australia? I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know. I do believe they are being very fast and loose with the definitions and what may be covered under the EULA. For a very funny take on this check out the first of the new season of South Park.

Microsoft is desperately fighting back against Apple for the title of most draconian overseer.  They are or have rolled out a Windows Phone update 7392, I guess they ran out of cool names.  All this update does is pretend to fix a few ‘out of date’ security certificates. It all has something to do with the NoDo improvement and the ChevronWP7 updater that provided an unofficial update for WP7 users. No problem the original releasers of the update will be coming out with another update that will move people back on the official update path, the one terminated by 7392. Sorry Microsoft you are not even close to taking the crown from Apple.

Industry News

So where is eInk these days?  They have colour at a reasonable resolution and refresh rate but I already told you about that. E Ink Holdings won’t be bringing out a new screen until sometime next year however. They have a good reason though. How about the ability to create a screen on a range of different surfaces? They are working on technology that will print a screen on cloth. This means T-Shirts with billboards, envelopes with messages and even new technology for full motion colour videos. Looks like eInk will be pretty good in 2012. 

An AOL presenter at a recent conference declared that “Flash is the new disk and disk is the new archive.” For the personal user I’m not so sure about that. Flash is used as both a disk and as backup. Removable drives are used as backup storage. Flash is still a bit too expensive and a bit too slow to replace the disk drive for the time being though that may change in the near future. Tapes are also still used widely for backup .

I do agree that flash performance has been improving in recent times but price is still a bit too high for wide spread commercial use. For some types of enterprise use flash is becoming more competitive and so in the near future there will be a switch from disks to flash in some areas. In the really large storage space disks will reign for a while yet. I do agree that as flash comes in disks will switch to a more long term storage use. As Google found out recently, having tape backups can also be of huge benefit when other data storage options, particularly on a network, becomes corrupted. They aren’t sexy but they are there when you need them and the cost per GB still can’t be beaten. The newer tape technology is also better as far as reliability when compared to a disk. They only spin once while writing and again when getting it back so there is little change of a mechanical failure corrupting your data. You also need to deliberately overwrite them and even then this happens slowly unlike disk where it can be done in an instant.

You know you’re getting old when the calculator you once used is celebrating its 30th birthday or worse if you are still using one. The venerable HP 12c Financial Calculator arrived on the scene in 1981and is still popular today. If you talk to a stockbroker, an accountant or a financial planner there is still a good chance they will pull one out of their pocket when going over figures with you. The HP 15c and 16c were introduced at the same time but they have long since faded into obscurity. You can however still buy the 12c online from HP for $69.99 or $79.99 for the Platinum Edition. The latter is supposed to be “6 times6 times faster with 4 times more memory than the original HP 12c.” It can also accept normal algebraic calculations instead of the RPN approach (blasphemy for some).