29 Dec 2007
Interesting article on
OpenCourse software based on Gilbert Strang, a famous mathematics professor
at MIT.
1 Dec 2007
When you check the weather on the internet in two different locations, do ads
for airfare between those two areas start to appear in your browser? This
is a simple example of
behavioral targeted marketing used by Yahoo in conjunction with United
Airlines.
24 Nov 2007
Is there a
solution to huge class sizes? University of Colorado classes can have
many hundreds of students.
22 Nov 2007
An
E-Book Reader That Just May Catch On
Once more into the fray? This time may be the start of something big for
Amazon, selling hundreds of thousands of e-books at dramatically reduced prices
(over printed versions). The
e-book reader (available here for $399) also comes with free wireless
connectivity (currently costing about $60/month) and the ability to email and
store documents (such as legal documents for review). It uses
e-ink technology that looks almost exactly
like paper. Nay-sayers bring up
Digital Rights Management which will not allow you to share an
e-book with someone else, quite the opposite of buying a book which you can
then loan or give to someone else. Others have a whole host of things they
think are wrong with Amazon's implementation (see
YouTube video).
Facebook Users Complain of New Tracking
Facebook's worth is predicated on its intellectual capital, i.e. its highly
networked user base. Facebook is trying to cash in some of that capital be
allowing marketing companies to track purchases made by users that it can then
show to other (similar) users. They provide an "opt-out" feature, but
privacy
advocates promote "opt-in" since opting-out can be made tedious, deceptive (as
in this case, a 20 second pop-up most would ignore) or hidden in legalese.
13 Nov 2007
IBM's Roadrunner set to smash supercomputing marks
Using a family of processors it developed for the Playstation 3 (16 processors
in one chip), IBM has developed a supercomputer that can perform over a
quadrillion operations per second (about a billion times faster than your
computer).
12 Nov 2007
IBM to Buy Cognos For About $5 Billion. Cognos allows business
intelligence on-demand, whenever, wherever needed.
8 Nov 2007
HD
DVD players are now available for about $100, but they are incompatible with
Blu-Ray DVDs. This video format war is reminiscent of the VHS vs. Sony
Beta-max. Beta-max was smaller and had better resolution than VHS, but was
slightly more expensive. Will Sony's Blu-ray suffer the same fate?
When
will the
US have a nation-wide high bandwidth wireless network?
WiMax technology
was being considered for this, but the plans for a nationwide network in 2008
have been postponed.
2 Nov 2007
Should the FTC
regulate invasive targeted marketing? Would you give up some of your
privacy to get free services such as email?
28 Oct 2007
Malware and identity thefts are
increasing and becoming more
sophisticated. Four people are sentenced for
defrauding Microsoft by re-selling software purchased at educational discounts.
Having trouble deciphering medical bills? You're not alone.
26 Oct 2007
The Senate agreed to a 7 year extension of the ban on
internet taxes by states on internet service providers (which would
obviously be
passed on to internet users).
Are
internet service providers censoring and blocking content they don't approve
of? If so, they shouldn't, anymore than a phone company should be
listening to your calls and stopping your service if they don't approve of what
you are saying over the phone.
18 Oct 2007
Will Ubuntu be your next operating system? The latest version is
released today and
offers
significant improvements in user interface.
Mark Shuttleworth
is the billionaire associated with Ubuntu. He is an entrepreneur who
graduated college with a Business degree in Information Systems.
12 Oct 2007
Red Hat Linux and Novell are being
sued
for infringement of
U.S. patent 5,072,412, "User interface with multiple workspaces for sharing
display system objects". Microsoft says they violate 235 of their software
patents.
General Public License (GPL) defenders think software patents are too
onerous.
Bothered by too many catalogs in the mail? Check out a free service to stop the mailings and help green the earth.
9 Oct 2007
The Nobel Prize was awarded to French and German scientists for their
work in nanotechnology. Their work, which
allows large amounts
of data to be easily used, is one of the first real applications of
nanotechnology. Incorporated in the read heads of hard drives and
acting like a magnifying lens, their giant magneto-resistance effect is
incorporated into many mp3 players, such as iPod.
Hitachi is using GMR to build 4 TeraByte harddrives the size of current
drives, although many manufactures are moving to solid-state drives.
Cluster computing, or massively parallel processing is getting a big boost from Google and IBM. Cluster computing uses high-density processing, not just high-density in transistors (which is nearing technological limits). Software must be designed to scale horizontally, to take advantage of the increase in the number of computers available to solve a problem, typically involving very large amounts of data (terabytes).
5 Oct 2007
The record companies
won a $220,000 verdict in the only copyright infringement case brought to
trial. The record companies involved in the lawsuit
are Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc.,
Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc. They sent her an email
in Feb 2005 to stop, she replaced her hard drive the next month, along with
other info, jurors found this very suspicious. She claimed she was a
victim of identity theft.
4 Oct 2007
The
first case of music file-sharing copyright violation is in trial today.
The music industry sued many individuals, most settling out of court for a few
thousand dollars. This is the first case to go to trial.
3 Oct 2007
Target stores are being sued for discrimination against blind people because
their web
site is "inaccessible to the blind". How would you make a web site
accessible to the blind?
A former top white house lawyer is saying that the warrantless wiretapping and eavesdropping program that he was involved with has no legal basis. The white house refuses to indicate to Congress how the program is legal, citing security reasons.
A new fiber optic cable from Corning can be installed like copper cable, without fear of breakage or signal attenuation from bending around corners. This paves the way for fiber optic connections to "the last mile", i.e. to your home.
30 Sep 2007
8 million Filipinos
use their cell phone to transfer money to each other as well as to purchase
items. The system is based on simple text messaging and costs about 13
cents per transfer. The Japanese having been doing this with more
sophisticated "smart phones" that have embedded chips that also allow waving the
phone in front of vending machines, etc to make transactions.
27 Sep 2007
Google is purchasing DoubleClick for about $3 billion, but Congress is
concerned this will create a company with too much power in on-line advertising.
Double-click tracks users as they surf the web and so does Google (mainly by web
searches). Does one company with so much information on people's web
surfing habits create privacy concerns?
Electronic warfare used to mean jamming radio broadcasts or sending false
messages. In our lifetimes I predict we will experience the effects of
internet-enabled warfare, including
attacks on power grids, air traffic control, telecommunications, water
treatment and others. Electro-magnetic pulse weapons targeted to destroy
integrated circuits are also being operationalized.
24 Sep 2007
Will massive
swarms of nano-technology bugs save us from the "terrorists" and/or become
part of our social fabric?
21 Sep 2007
Texas A&M offers an elite MBA degree in ranching. The degree focuses
on the business aspects of ranch management, but is also heavy in topics such as
Quantitative Genetics and Nutrition. The core business courses are
Accounting Information Systems and Management Science, with seminars in Finance
and Marketing.
9 Sep 2007
Have you been the victim of Internet Fraud but don't know who to complain to?
The Internet Crime Complaint Center is the
(federal) government's answer. "IC3's mission is to serve as a vehicle to
receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints regarding the rapidly expanding
arena of cyber crime." About 45% of their complaints (207,000) relate to
auctions. Why is the IC3 a federal agency versus a state or local agency?
Why should taxpayer's have to pay for this?
31 Aug 2007
Sony will no longer sell
music using the Sony-proprietary ATRAC system of coding, Sony's new Walkman
will be compatible with the more popular open formats such as .jpg and .mpeg as
well as Microsoft's .wma and .wmv.
Sony is also working on making money in virtual (PS3) worlds, but has delayed the launch until spring 08. IBM and Circuit City are also working together to operationalize virtual worlds. Is there a "slippery slope" argument against virtual worlds?
28 August 2007
Are you willing to give up your privacy on the chance that your private
information might be useful investigating terrorism? What is the "slippery
slope" if the government is allowed to collect/analyze data on its (innocent)
citizens? One outcome could be George Orwell's 1984 scenario of
"thought-crimes" (crimes against humanity for thinking unorthodox thoughts). The
ADVISE data mining
system was developed to look for connections in data but has been cancelled due
to privacy violation concerns. If a database system to fight terrorism
discovers someone with an identity that might be a person who has not paid
child-support, should that data be relayed to local authorities?
20 August 2007
Massively
parallel super-computing concepts are being implemented into consumer
products such as cell phones. Parallelization supports multi-tasking, but
not all processing tasks are easily split-able.
13 August 2007
Nielsen surveys has completed a 4 year study that indicates that the
time spent viewing on-line content has surpassed time spent on email, search
engines or shopping. Social networks have helped boost content
viewing, while Instant Messaging has decreased the time spent on email.
47% of time spent on-line was viewing content.
8 July 2007
Are large telecom companies like Verizon being duplicitous when
signing customers up for last
mile fiber optic services? The last mile replaces the copper wire
connection into your house with a fiber optic line, allowing a tremendous
increase in bandwidth and services.
12 May 2007
Rather than being a consumer of content, try being a content creator (and
getting paid for it)! the new web site
socialDragon lets user post material,
then tag it, that is
keyword describe it, then advertisers decide whether to use it or not.
This idea is also a take-off on the Cornell University professor who invents
games to help computer systems describe photographs. See:
Human Computation enlists
many people playing games to help solve problems computers are not good at.
Watch the video!
18 April 2007
If you had a student loan from the government, would you expect your information
to be kept private or would you expect
the
government to allow private companies to mine the data to target students?
Federal privacy laws require that data collected be used only for the purpose it
was collected for, not re-sold or used to create profits for loan-sharks.
13 April 2007
The
Internet Router In Space (IRIS) project has selected a Cisco Systems router
for speeding up the communication of IP traffic. Sending a message to a
geosynchronous orbit satellite (24,000 miles away) takes about a half second for
a round trip message. Currently, several trips need to be made, but with
IRIS, only one, saving considerable time.
10 April 2007
SalesForce.com has introduced
content management software based on wiki, YouTube and MySpace ideas.
It is subscription funded and web-based, making it much easier for the user to
manage (a Total Cost of Ownership concept).
Oil refinery problems are causing crude oil to be stuck in Cushing, Oklahoma, which is reaching its capacity. Crude oil prices are declining because if it is purchased (on NY market), there is no place to store it prior to refining. This is an example of a network with a critical trans-shipment node.
3 April 2007
In a cost cutting move,
Circuit City recently fired thousands of employees because they "earned too
much". The article contains many ideas related to the service industry in
the internet era, the race to the bottom (cost), and the effects of
out-sourcing.
Are video games a form of art, much like movies? The makers of Grand Theft Auto, whose recent game is set in "Liberty City", aka New York City, say the uproar over their violent game is for political purposes only and that NYC does not get offended when violent movies are made about the city.
Distributed processing using redundant micro-bots may be used to explore recently found caves in Mars. The caves could contain water and life-forms.
20 March 2007
A math problem developed in
the 1800s was solved last week by a team of 18 mathematicians and computer
scientists. More and more, very difficult math problems will require the
use of innovative programming and supercomputers. It took a
16 processor supercomputer 77 hours to complete
the task that the team spent about 4 years programming.
19 March 2007
Does it bother you that your Google searches are stored and analyzed by not only
Google, but government agencies? Google said today that they will
anonymize all their server logs after about 20 months, unless the government
requires they keep them longer.
18 March 2007
Who is held liable when people
post copyrighted
material to sites like YouTube? Is it the poster, the provider of the
web site or both? Viacom and others say its both. Google has aruged
"... they
comply with the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) because they remove
copyrighted material as soon as they are asked by the copyright owner. "
But this places an onerous burden on the injured party in addition, "copyrighted
works are "the cornerstone" of its (YouTube's) business model."
9 March 2007
The ironically-named Patriot Act to identify people not considered to be
patriots came under fire when it was discovered that the FBI
significantly under reported the number of people it collected data on
without subpoenas. Is there a moral high ground when a government spies on
its citizens? Does the government have the right to by-pass constitutional
rights in order to preserve itself? An excerpt: "In at least two cases
cited by the newspaper, the investigators found that the FBI obtained full
credit reports whereas the security letters could only be used to obtain
summary information. In other cases, telephone companies, banks or
Internet providers responded with detailed personal information about
customers that the letters do not permit to be released, the article said."
Stock spammers send me emails about "tips" for buying penny stocks. The spammers send out hundreds of millions of these emails and it seems to have the intended effect. These mostly worthless stocks rise by several hundred percent then fall back to their appropriate worth, with investors being the losers while the spammers buy low, sell high. The SEC is investigating and has stopped trading of many small companies' stocks.
28 Feb 2007
A
computer glitch caused erroneous reporting of stock trades on Wall street
yesterday, which after being fixed, triggering programmed trading software to
incorrectly trade stocks because the DOW took a huge plunge in a matter of
minutes. Should someone pay for the money lost due to this accident?
25 Feb 2007
RFID devices transmit information wirelessly and are now
smaller than a human hair! They can store our medical history,
clothing history, places visited and many people are concerned they are a
violation of privacy. Would you buy a shirt that had an RFID device
implanted in it?
9 Feb 2007
Researchers at MIT have announced they have made a breakthrough in the
development of all optical networks by
integrating
optical switching with silicon based manufacturing methods. How will
optical quality bandwidth delivered to your home change life?
7 Feb 2007
Can you sue
someone because their website is misleading? Country singer Keith
Urban is because the person who owns
www.KeithUrban.com is making money, not off pretending to be the singer, but
by not telling visitors he is not the singer. Confusing? Go to the
site and judge for yourself.
Would you
download a movie that you can't watch on your TV? Wal-mart is entering
the movie download game, but still doesn't incorporate burning the download to a
DVD -- why not, too complicated, too expensive?
Did you notice the
attack
on the computers running the internet's domain name system? Probably
not, since it is a very robust system.
6 Feb 2007
If you don't have access to FrontPage,
other
editors are reviewed here. I tried the free, open-source NVu and
thought it was ok, but not as intuitive as FrontPage.
5 Feb 2007
Do automated systems for issuing
tickets to speeders and other traffic infractions bother you? If you
received a bill in the mail for speeding at a location you knew you were not at
at that time, what would you do?
31 Jan 2007
Windows Vista has arrived! What
features
does it offer?
30 Jan 2007
Sweden is the first country to
open a diplomatic office in Second Life.
Second Life is a virtual world where people
meet, go to concerts, spend money, exchange goods, etc.
Get a First Life is a satire of
Second Life citizens.
29 Jan 2007
Would you consider collecting information on people, then selling it to
interested parties, freedom of speech protected by the first amendment?
Two information companies use this defense for
collecting prescription information, then selling it to drug companies to
find out which doctors are not prescribing their drugs.
28 Jan 2007
Should you be concerned that Big Brother is watching you? As technology
advances, employers (and the government)
have more tools to track their
employees. Is biometrics a threat to employee privacy? Is there
such a thing as employee privacy? What are the cost savings of using
biometrics and tracking devices? If biometrics devices were very cheap and
everyone was "in the database", what would life be like (Steven Spielberg's
movie "Minority Report" offers his glimpse into the future)?
27 Jan 2007
Moore's Law says that the # of transistors on a chip will roughly double every
two years. However, silicon based technology has reached its limits.
A
new technology based on hafnium will extend Moore's Law and improve battery
life and processing power. What technologies need more processing power
using less electrical power? (mobile broadband, any others?)
26 Jan 2007
Windows new operating system, currently called Vista will go on sale 30 January.
This
article from a gaming site discusses its impact and posits that even after 5
years of development, it is still evolutionary vis-à-vis revolutionary. Is
Microsoft becoming the GM and Ford of the software business, too big to respond
to the environment or to they create the environment due to their size?
What components of the new system listed in the article look attractive and what
are some Vista entry barriers to businesses and individuals?
19 Jan 2007
A new computer
virus has been detected that uses a recent headline to draw
people in. The e-mail's subject line is "230 dead as storm batters
Europe." and when opened will install software to allow control of the computer
via a back-door in order to post spam. What is the "slippery slope"
argument here for not allowing this type of activity, that is, what would the
internet be like if everyone's computer was infected with spam posting software?