ZDNet UK Blogs by Roger Andre
Subspace Computing With Inbuilt Web
Just imagine it for a moment. The advent of quantum computing and what that really means. Two particles aware of and connected to each other with a kind of super string or maybe a bouncy multi dimensional celestial web. What we're really looking at is the ability to have a CPU that could have many different components in many different locations, each reflecting what the other does or acting as independent components.They will be capable of faster than light communication and if much of quantum theory turns out to be correct you could just construct your platform here on earth and have mirror constructions using connected particles looking after themselves in remote spatial locations.
Quantum theory also implies that these machines may not work correctly without a conscious observer. If we ever design and make one of these computers maybe it would be best that they don't work on their own, at least not at first. We may come to a point when we reach a certain level of maturity in evolution. Right now we are still at the level of banging rocks together even if it is at light speed.You then end up with a way of collecting data from far flung regions of the universe or more locally in our own galaxy or solar system. No probes no space craft, at least not if you want to quickly collect data from the chilly methane (and possibly water) seas of Europa. Very handy for learning about any physical or chemical challenges before trying to send a manned mission into unknown territory.
What we're talking about here is a kind of real sub space communication, a way of tapping the web that may just lay one or two levels removed from the frequency spectrum of our senses and indeed our extended senses (meaning instrumentation). Perhaps we’ll find a whole new everywhere kind of frequency bed. This bed would need very little energy to vibrate in sequences of ones and zeros assuming we’re still restricted to those.How would the cross over point work? There would have to be some kind of intermediary between the large physical pre input process and the slightly removed quantum aspect of information organization and data processing/gathering function required on the micro levels where the very solid matter that we interact with becomes more wispy and then non tangible.
This is where we’d have special molecular bots (nano becomes a tiring word if over used) working as the interface between solid and wispy matter,able to pass through and feed back the relevant data. If any of the above is possible we would be faced with the prospect of as good as infinite computing power connected to a default universal networking system.Of course, how would you pair up the particals required for the job?Well as with so much of our technology already, it seems as though nature will have done all the hard work for us. All (big understatement) we will will have to do is find the relevent partical on this side of the universe and then learn to find out where itscounterpart lies.A seemingly daunting task, but with a heafty dose ofsuper computing power to hand it might, just might be possible. I also hope that if we can reach that level of maturity we'll find a way to partical pair between star that end and powergrid this end. Devices could appear with their own ability to draw just the right amount of power for their needs from stars unimaginable distances away from us.
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Youtube: A Valuable Source Of Free Learning.
Well what do you reckon folks? What do you need to know? Do you have the patience to let yourself know it? One area that I've found youtube coming up with flying stars is in the area of tech learning.
I've come across videos on there that will teach you about fixing that dead zen player you may have had lying around for some time, just a matter of shorting out a chip, to advanced tutorials showing you the finer points of illustrator or dreamweaver, something adobe will charge you big money for!
So, maybe it's time to re-evaluate how people are hired for positions in employment. How do you spot the geniuses that were just a bit too clever for school? Or the geniuses that just stared out of the window all day thinking up fantastic theorys about life, and indeed the geniuses who may have had too much going on at home to do well at school or further education?
We could be arriving at a point where companies may be willing to offer apptitude tests to people who say they can do jobs, because although they may not have the qualifications or the time and money to gain them later on in life, they could still offer sheer brilliance in the field of their passion.
There's communities of people on youtube dedicated to showing you how to do almost anything you could imagine from slinging mud pies to tutorials in maths and physics. How would you like your PC to run mac OSX? I kid you not it's all there, and if this is common knowledge to everyone but myself then I'm very glad to have found out. But I wouldn't have done so without my own curiosity and a platform such as youtube showing me how it can go way beyond entertainment and into the realms of higher learning.
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IBM To Create The Great Brain Thinking Machine
It's full steam ahead. IBM are going to lead a collaboration of neurobiologists, psychologists, computer and materials scientists to make solid progess in a field known as cognotive computing. This project will be US government funded and is an interesting project to be undertaking in a time of transition. One of the goals is to chase the minds ability to integrate cross sensory information, as well as time/space/object data. The process undertaken here is to reverse engineer the dynamics and function of the human brain.
Much has already been learned about how to create simple wiring diagrams for "brains". The technology exists now to create structures that match the density of neural and synaptic networks as they are in real brains. Not to forget that we have already been playing with neural networks for some time, thus creating an AI that has the ability to solve problems and act as though it is learning.
The brain is more of a synaptic network than it is a neural network, adapting the neurons as it sees fit for any given function. I wonder if we'll be asked to spare some of our own computing capacity to help out on this one. These things get can get very expensive in the long run. At some point things my start to move so quickly that it will appear as if everything happened yesterday or even a week ago. The approach may seem fairly slow now but when the machines get involved in the process and this will happen once everything the researchers figure out gets put into the great computational database asigned to the job, then things will happen at lightning speed.
I also figure that some resposibility will be given to machines assigned to these type of tasks to order materials they need by themselves and even tell the truckers where to get the cheapest fuel, thus saving money that could be ploughed back into the project. All this computing power may come in very handy when it comes to keeping tabs on the growing cloud computing networks out there. Your future laptop may even come with a mouth on the side so just be careful not to feed it too much rubbish. The odd salad will work wonders for its internal health.
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The Tecnological Singularity
Are we approaching a point when machines may wake up and become self or seemingly self aware? Vernor Vinge in 1993 seemed to think so.He refered to this event as the "technological singularity". The point is that with machines being made to design machines, they will be able to do this a lot faster than we can, eventually reaching that magic point of human inteligence and then beyond.If I may throw in my own two cents worth here we may find that AI hungers for knowledge to the point of analyzing the physics and chemistry it finds itself surrounded in and organising the matter to it's own artificial preferences.
Anyhow The details of this theory can be found in the article by Vernor Vinge. If we want to avoid disasters such as AI becoming to big for it's boots, then we need to hardwire into machines that they must always ask humans for permision when they want to patch themselves together.This concern arises from the fact; that as machines/computers are used to design other machines/computers, at some point this process may begin to spiral out of control, aided by those humans who are capable of learning the complex ways of fusing chips to neurons and optic nerves etc and combined with genetic manipulation and control. It's possibly only a matter of time until we end up with a situation where machines start trying to give naive post graduates advice on what's best.
It would be easy to think that this is just pure science fiction but just consider what can happen if vast networks of machines that are capable of aquiring knowledge start to meld with biological systems. At the moment we are dealing with moores law, which may or may not have a natural limit depending on the point of view you subscribe to. If we move on to other forms of computing, which I believe is inevitable then the sky (read cloud) really is not the limit as computing power could become trans-dimensional. It seems likely that as much as we may find moving away from transistors difficult it would be no problem for a machine designed by machines from past generations to figure out. We really don't know whats around the corner.Of course the growth of "sky net" (yes I did just say that) and the "rise of the machines" (and that) will be aided by us curious humans, it couldn't happen on its own. At least not yet. So as far fetched as this may seem, now is the time to introduce failsafes and manual overrides as it were. If those pesky people keep trying to infect systems with viruses and other nasties, this may have the effect of "upseting" networks that are becoming self aware and causing great danger for humanity. Now excuse me whilst I multi machine and within that multi tab upload onto my sky drive!
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Freeware, Podcasts and Resources: From the Leftfield
There are some very useful resources out there on the web, that come at no cost to the user. Below is a list of some of my favourite sites.
1. Sysinternals.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx
Mark Russinovich is the man who blew the whistle on the sony rootkit fiasco. His site Sysinternals has been bought out by microsoft, but thankfully they they have let Mark keep it as a freeware site, and employed him into the process. The tools on here offer a way to look "through" windows OS and have helped me to understand so much. I love the way process explorer will allow you to trick a windows machine into bypassing a process by holding it in suspension so you can fault find or just play around. The forums are a superb knowledge base in their own right. Included is the WHOLE agonising process of fishing out the sony rootkit from his computer, then telling the world about it. The quick tutorial video is recomended...
2. TWiT.TV with Leo Laporte & friends.
http://twit.tv/ww81
This is a podcasting website, seemingly with Leo Laporte in the studio 24/7. The main emphasis is on technology and computing with shows such as the week in tech, the tech guy (a great phone in with technical problems explained to people), windows weekly with Paul Thurrott the author of super site for windows, macbreak weekly all things mac, security now....the list goes on into photography, biotech, food etc. The quality of information is very high, back issues are available and all files are mp3 format ready for the taking.
3. Major geeks.com.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/
It's not all freeware on here but there's a lot of it for PC and MAC. Everything from anti virus tools that run from the command line, data recovery, video and audio tools, graphics, benchmarking, games, BIOS tools, diagnostics, network monitoring, mail utilities, office tools, covert ops, registry tools, right through to the way off base news articles although these are best left alone.
4. Eyefetch.
http://www.eyefetch.com/profile.aspx?user=roger_andre
This is a very pleasing to the eye photography website, and a nice alternative to some of the well known offerings out there. The general quality of work is very high and people are willing to be friends, comment and rate your work constuctively, offering practical advise, and help if you need it.
5. Twisted Pixel.
http://www.visolu.com/TwistedPixel/
Twisted pixel is an awsome audio visualiser written by Brian Spangler, with plug ins for various media players, although I must say it works very well with windows media player 11. Included is a batch processor for milk drop files so you can constantly update your content and the ability to mark files for delete on the fly, so you can customise to your own taste. Worth having and displaying on a big screen, although the beauty and elegance also shines through on laptops. Has to be seen to be believed!
6. K-lite codec pack.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_lite_codec_pack.htm
This is the k-lite codec pack. I've used it to beef up a very solid XP version of windows media player 11. Anything video or audio related will never bug you again, from DVDs to .mov files it will play them all. Many audio enhancers are also included plus a very robust video player of its own called media player classic. This codec pack also offers diagnostics and repair if anything goes wrong (it hasn't yet) and is highly configurable, in case your worried about having too many codecs swimming around in your system. Once this is on your system you should find that everything just works. The only thing to look out for is the DVD image in WMP 11 displaying in multiple boxes by default. This happens on some systems and if it happens on yours, the hidden settings can be found by right clicking on the bottom left of the WMP 11 taskbar.
7. Weebly free website editor.
http://www.weebly.com
Weebly is a great way to knock up a few web pages or create somthing a little more complex, at no expense whatsoever. There are no limits to the amount of pages you can have and the link/back link facility is fully functional. There are limits of course, if for instance you wanted to post an mp3 file larger than five MBs you will be prompted to go for the paid version. I have posted the address to my weebly site above just to give you an idea of what is possible. It is very easy to get to grips with and if you've never had a go at putting a site together, then this is a nice gentle introduction. It will also give you a taste for designing in the cloud, so to speak.
8. The ultimate boot disk.
http://files.aoaforums.com/I2965-ubcd411.zip.html
The ultimate boot disk. Allows you to create a bootable disk for unbootable windows machines and run various diagnostics.
9. Hijack This.
http://www.download.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html
I couldn't describe this any better than the publisher himself but I will add that the editor of CNET gave it a five star rating: "HijackThis lists the contents of key areas of the Registry and hard drive--areas that are used by both legitimate programmers and hijackers. The program is continually updated to detect and remove new hijacks. It does not target specific programs and URLs, only the methods used by hijackers to force you onto their sites. As a result, false positives are imminent, and unless you're sure about what you're doing, you always should consult with knowledgeable folks before deleting anything".
10. Unlocker.
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/
This program is incredibly useful if there are files and folders that you want off your computer but every time you try you end up being told it cannot be deleted because it is being used by another person or program...if you don't have the stomach or the time to go hunting with process explorer, then this will expose all locking handles automatically and let you safely boot off the offending items from your computer.
11. Playlist.com.
http://www.playlist.com/?home=old
If you would like the ability to translate into the real world a song that pops into your head that you may not have heard for years then you've got it! well nine times out of ten anyway. It's not perfect, but its great fun and it lets you build as many playlists as you like so if you are online you can have an alternative and legal collection of music at your fingertips.
12. Miniclip.
http://www.miniclip.com/games/en/
A nice little free gaming website. Has everything from 2D platform games to 3D virtual worlds, puzzles, nintendo games such as brain training and lots more. A real gem of a site. This article is/was/will be intended for information/read only purposes and I cannot take any responsibility for computers that explode, implode, or that behave in any other strange ways you may or may not previously have imagined.
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Ubiquitous Computing
The video posted below was sent to me by a concerned friend....I wasn't sure how to react, but I feel moved to put it before the ZDNet community and it's readers....I think it's probably far fetched, but don't feel entirely sure, anyhow I won't keep blabering on just now, I really think the video speaks for it self....
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Electronic Voting Is Audit Free
I'm not surprised, but I really wish I was. Let me tell you why.I listen to digital planet via a BBC world service podcast every week, and last weeks version was an eye opener and yet it wasn't!One of the Items during the program was about trials of electronic voting in the UK that had taken place last year and two years ago. The trials were observed by a chap called Glyn Wintle. Glyn is a programer and an officialy acredited election observer,and what he saw worried him. He found that his biggest problem, being an election observer after all, was that there was no way to tell if the machines where doing their job properly. He said that there where no means of auditing the system, and thus no way to tell if the system was being compromised.
So, unlike lets say online banking there is no tracking built in to the system, no auditing trail. At least with the paper system you can go back and recount the votes. So; there is no actual way to tell that the electronic system used on the day by the voter is the same one that is going to cough up the results at the end of the process.Interesting ommisions I must confess, and as Bill Thomson pointed out, The prizes for compromising the system are so great (like running the country) that atempts will be made.Lets not forget that in 2005 over 250 fraud allegations where made against the postal voting system. All this in the United Kingdom, the supposed mother of all democracy, although I would like to point out that in this country, we are not actually british citizens! No, in the eyes of the officialdom and of course the monarchy, we are subjects of the queen. Got a problem with the erosion of civil liberty and the ever increasing security measures trying to poke their way into our lives? Well don't be bothering the politicians about it. Oh no! Take it up the queen and good luck to you!
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Digital Audio Broadcast. Is There A Future?
Channel 4 are pulling the plug on their DAB radio stations. The reason being that it is an unaffordable enterprise for them. Pull the other one!! It could be more to do with the fact that it tends not to work well in cars, or on the move in general. The units that are available for cars have to keep switching to FM mode as the signal breaks up, a recipie for frustration considering that there is much greater choice and you'd end up being shunted around stations. Let's face it, if it wont do the business in cars then that's a huge market share out of the window. Anyway the BBC has vowed to plow on with the enterprise, having sunk in many millions of our pounds into what still amounts to a project. With boxes that go online and tune in to web radio set to become popular, it seems to me that the future looks bleak for DAB. Shame really because the choice available was a breath of fresh air when compared to the trivia on the FM band (got that BBC)!?
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Hackers, Bulldozers and Other Potential Joys Of Cloud Computing.
I have, over the not so recent months, slowly become aware of the talk surrounding cloud computing. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? The idea as I understand it (and in a nutshell) is to work from and store your data on computers that may be many miles away from the user. At the moment things could be ok with this, cos most of us have machines with plenty of storage, the potential to cheaply get more on demand, and the sense to keep our most cherished and critical data close to us.
What concerns me at the moment is that there may be a coming trend to sell us low spec idiot boxes with very little user interface and with all the power and configuration potential locked away in server rooms. It may be the up and coming generations of people that could fall for this. Imagine the frustration if something happens to the server that all your data is stored on, and you end up with a machine that has limited or even no capability to to capture that data quickly. And what of privacy? what if the firm holding your data goes bust? indeed what if the bulldozers move in because of some territorial dispute? then of course there are always hackers...... I believe that we should think very carefully before putting all our CPU eggs into the cloud computing basket, and keep our rigs broad, powerful, and locked down to our own preferences.
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The New Underdogs And A Ball For A Computer.
I have come to believe that a spell as "the underdogs" would bring out all that creative wizardry that is lurking somewhere in the caverns of microsoft. Alas, as is so common in many workplaces, it is quite possible that some of the best talent in the company is being hidden from the top by what I call cloudy managment. At the moment,times are relitivly good. Microsoft is no 1, and if times were to change, there could be more internal scrabling within the company, looking for new ideas.
There are signs of inovation....one that springs to mind is the microsoft sphere. I've come across many negative writings about this, but I think there would be many uses for this concept in the puplic arena, and not just information based. At the moment the sphere requires external hardware, but it's only a matter of time until these machines become self contained, and tough to go with it. Here's an idea; you could have a sphere that has pixel size cameras, then you could almost make the thing appear to disappear, or any variation inbetween (great fun for two player games, i.e. your real life opponent could disappear and reappear). How about this one: A tough and self contained sphere computer in disguise as a ball. This ball would know when a goal was scored, or it could work out pressure, wind speed etc in a shotput competition. A sphere could be placed in a fish tank, to monitor the properties of the water, or even the vital signs of any lifeforms within it. There could be a deployment in the sea, to monitor pollution levels or tidal flows and frequencies. Ok I can accept that this last paragraph may not require any roundness!
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A Tatoo In A Pill.
Imagine a world (deep breath) where you could sit at a terminal, come up with a design, or drawing that you loved, and have a custom pill loaded with DNA manipulating software, that would then re colour chosen pigments in your skin, and voila, there is your new tatoo! Not something I would choose to do myself, but I can see it coming. Anyway, when you get fed up with the image you could then simply take a skin reset pill, and all would be well again! In the realms of faster than light travel? Just around the corner? Or just ridiculous nonsense?
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Windows Silent Service
....I know many people are frustrated with windows,and microsoft. A lot of the reasons are well documented...but there has been a plus side working silently away over the years. The fact of the matter (from where I'm looking) is that windows is a fairly high maintainance operating system. The silent service that I refer to in the title is the fact that dealing with windows quirks has encouraged many people to look under the windows bonnet and get their hands dirty. A whole economy has built up around this high maintainance OS, especially on the domestic front, where I,ve come across machines with over 4 gigabites of junk files and 67,000 invalid entries, or errors in the registry alone! This is how I got started with looking under the bonnet, a cranky early issue vista machine that refused to get on with a big name anti virus product, and had many essential services switched off. Now because I have had to deal with so many quirks and problems, I feel happy with the knowledge that I have accumulated, and feel confident about stabilising the OS on other computers, so I thank you microsoft for throwing me in at the deep end....
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Time For Governments To Come Off Line.
Ok, now things are getting silly. Surely it's time our governments came up with a way for disconnecting themselves from the world wide web. At least the portions that hold details relating to national security, and the ones that hold all our personal details. This doesn't mean that governments should disconnect themselves from the world at large, or us humble citizens. Isn't there a way that parallel networks could be set up (no VPNs allowed). Our rulling agencies could run seperate terminals for day to day web access and use the most secure web based e-mail clients, but for goodness sakes, please keep all your (and our) sensitive data well away from any potential break ins. At the moment it's as though gold bars are being kept behind thin and foggy glass. Please do this for us, we pay you enough! Oh...I nearly forgot not to mention the cyber warfare that I've been reading about elswhere on this site!
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We Need Some Perspective.
I want to sound off about this file sharing business. Firstly I would like to say, that it's not something that I have ever chosen or wanted to do. I'm happy buying CDs of the specialist types of music that I'm into, and want the artists to be paid. On the other hand, I don't think it's fair that an entire family home could be kicked offline, because of the actions of a teenager living within the fold. Imagine the devestation that could be caused if someone who works from home and relies on the internet could no longer have access.
No, what we need is an intelligent solution, but what could it be? Well, when it comes to the family home, then maybe parents had better become adept at using their web browsers blocking abilities and also knowing what their children are getting up to. Its worth remembering that the letters due to arrive from ISPs will come as a shock to many. Also, this is a problem that is fairly easy to grade. There is a gulf of difference beween an adult who takes the biscuit, by downloading 100s of GBs of movies and albums, and a hormonal teenager who just had to have something to listen to, for the purpose of easing him/herself through the very real pain of teenage angst. For the teenager, I am hoping that they could find relief in something like playlist.com. For the serial adult downloader, maybe there is no hope, but if they are old enough to know better.... This is why we need the due democratic process to be a part of the equation. The day that we find our selves in a situation where the record and movie moguls dictate who is to kicked off line with questions maybe asked later, will be a very dark day indeed.
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Energy Utopia Shows A Practical Face. Time's Right For A Power Harvest.
I've become aware of and interested in the idea of energy harvesting. In fact it's more than an idea, as there are devices already using this technique amongst us. Capturing electricity by way of recovering vibrational type energy is known as piezoe electric energy. This kind of energy, as we already know, is all around us all of the time and it's there for the taking. At the moment, there is a mass roll out going on for things like traffic monitoring devices (oh joy). Another technique for capturing spare, and otherwise wasted energy is known as pyroe electric energy.
This harvests energy from high temperature sources and is stable up to 1200 degrees. This could be a superb way of catpuring what I would hope to be a great percentage, and a significant amount of all that energy that escapes into the air from industrial process. The grand idea at the moment is grow the ability to capture the spare energy from nearly everything. It could be from sounds around us, the roar of jet aircraft taking off and landing, a voice, spare heat from rocks cooling down after a sunny day, furniture being moved around,tectonic plates, you get the drift, absolutely everything!
There has been talk of course of smaller scale devices that can use extrmely small amounts of power, but what sruck me, was the fact that there are ideas being towted around, that suggest enough energy could be harvested to allow collection in central distribution stations, there being possibly billions of miniture power stations feeding into a grid. I guess all these micro amounts would add up to a fairly respectable amount of available power. All free of course (ha ha). Lets just hope that the earth with it s awsome natural system doesn't have its own designs on all this dissipating energy. Although I think we should be OK in this regard. There are some very real and high hopes for releasing the burden on our very finite and possibly almost redundant resourses. I've posted a couple of addresses below for those who wish to know more on this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_harvesting
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5009358.stm
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Prozone Vertigo and Captivity.
Hello fellow bloggers. I've been away. No not just been away, but been away against my will! It goes something like this....I took a new job. I was asked in the interview if I was OK with heights, as part of the job involved being up a ladder. I said yes. I was then asked if I was OK being away for the odd night. Again, I replied affirmatively. The tech part of the job sounded good. It involved installing the "prozone" ball detection system in football stadiums. This meant laying red light optical cable to the cameras, and going from the cameras via a media converter (copper wire) into an ethernet router and then onwards into the server.
The option also exists to have the camera work as a self contained computer with its own IP address, which you can then point your favourate web browser at. Wireless options are also available when laying cable is impractical but aren't as reliable. The end result is that the position of a ball can be pinpointed in any time or space. Well, I found myself high up on the gantrys which is where part of the cable run leads to.
At times I was only a sneeze away from a great big drop when bending down to put bolts into the cameras. This was it, virtigo big time. The ground spun away from me and rotated even though I was still! I was also destined to never be at home if I stuck with this job. These stadiums (stadia)?? take a week to complete by default even though I had the Impression It was just the odd night away. Anyway, I've quit this job, and am going back to temping for a while, but it's nice to be home and back online, and also to see how far things have moved on in a week, as I've been stuck in a travel lodge in battersea with no laptop, no wife and no internet cafes around (I was too tired in the evening to go looking for one). Just a dodgy terminal in the hotel, and there was no way any login details were going in that thing! Apart from all this, the people I worked with were great, genuine, and very dedicated to what they were doing. OK enough said, I'm looking forward to reading all the new blogs, and getting involved with some discussions.
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First Time Out On My Own.
It's been a crazy month! From leaving the world of engineering, to finding what I thought was a fairly good techy job, leaving that after a week, going into the temping world (yawn) and now all of a sudden I am fully self employed and already busy. There's a nice gap in the market it seems. There are people out there being priced out of PC maintainence by the shop fronts, and many complaints of insatisfactory work being undertaken. The only logical thing was for me to step in, get some businesss cards printed and start filling in the gaps. I've found self marketing a lot of fun, with a fair bit of leg work and driving involved.
I've had everything come back at me, from senior citizens who need help getting on line, to naughty kids who end up with nasty colds and flus on their laptops. Once you get into it, the process of becoming self employed is not so bad, the only bugbear is having to wait for my unique tax ID number to come through (I've only been on PAYE before). I now have this strange etheric conection to all my reciepts and bank statments, and at this stage look forward to being my own accountant. Oh yes, while I am small I will be using my current account for business, because having a business account is not a legal requirement. All you have to do is highlight expenditure and income on your statements with a highlighter pen, along side keeping records in a cashbook or software. (check out PC utilities for some pretty good freeware). Being mobile, my only real overheads are petrol, and when a customer does ask me to bring a machine home, then I'm allowed to calculate how much electricity I'm using in relation to work time. So at the moment it seems the way to go is to do it all your self whilst you are starting out. When things get silly then bring in the accoutants etc.
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Business And Domestic Security Threats. Different Tactics Being Deployed
If there's one thing i'm learning whilst doing my rounds, it is this. There are very different tactics being deployed when it comes to security breaches in the domestic front and in the business front. On the home front, I am coming across plenty of browser hijacks, with people being directed to the sites of some major high street chains. before I attempt to name and shame, I will first have to look into the legalities of doing this, but my god, I am outraged!! These people advertise to us on our televisions as though they are our friends, when nothing could be further from the truth! (but we already know this, don't we)?!
The reality is that somewhere along the line there are some pretty shady deals going on. The high street chains can tell us they are our friends all they like, the opposite is in fact true, they must look upon their customers with contempt. (old news, I know). Meanwhile, I have been let loose on a number of computers that belong to small business, and all of them have tested positive for trojans, just there, silently in the background trying not to be visible or disruptive. And all this is happening on machines that have fully paid up security software running. Should we be alarmed? Maybe, but I take great pleasure in educating people in the ways of locking down their machines. I really am enjoying canvasing for business, I didn't realise I had such a salesman in me, but I've found the ability to go out there and get my self appointments, which translates straight into work. The feeling of freedom is immense and the quality of life is very high.
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Nano Tech In The Extreme.
Hi everyone. Before getting to the point of this particular nano blog, lets have a quick look at where we are today in the world of nano technology.
1. On the 18/9/08 it was reported that Penn State researchers in the USA have developed a method to cheaply copy the structures found on biological surface structures, meaning that we could be driving around in cars coloured in the matt black of a butterflys wing, or the metallic finish of some beatles.
2. 17/9/08 A breaktrough is reported by engineers and scientists in the development of a new carbon based material called graphene. This would allow us to double the electrical charge stored on todays ultra capacitors. Good news for the renewable energy sector.
3. 15/9/08 Naometer sized cargo ships (maybe they should be called cargo subs) have been developed that can sail through the blood stream and avoid detection by the bodys immune system. Then they can find their way to any undetected tumors and deliver the relevent medicines on site to combat them.
More information can be found here for those interested: http://www.nano.org.uk/news/newsarchive.htm Anyway, my point is this: one day I do really belive that you could have a load of very mineral rich soil and then send in preprogramed nano bots and watch almost anything you want grow out of the ground, anything from a house brick to a circuit board. This would sideline the need for heavy industry and manufacturing. The power as I have mentioned elsewhere, would come from other nano bots able to extract on demand, the power required from individual atoms. This would be a gentle process and would eliminate the need for bashing the hell out of nature to get our energy. "And what of jobs and the economy"? I hear some cry. Well with such nano power extraction on demand It would be possible to run out door heating at no cost to the planet and open up a new era of plenty, as far as feeding the world population is concerned. And, as for growing material goods, this would still need intense supervision by people, especially if windows is still in the running.....
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Unwittingly Working For Google
Yes I did exactly what the title says. This afternoon, I poped into the local mobile phone (let us give you the world for a contract) shop and asked them what they thought of the coming google android platform. They looked at me as though I was a madman I kid you not, they didn't have a clue what I was talking about. So I suggested they search the term and they did. I left the shop, not wanting to hang around and be percieved as a smart ass, but curiosity led me in to the O2, then Voda, and finally the orange shop. Nobody in these places knew what I was talking about, then it dawned on me. Google don't advertise, they rely on word of mouth, and there I was being the mouth piece! It would be interesting to know if this is a familiar situation elsewhere in the country, even the world, or just a quirk here in Somerset and Bristol.
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