3D & James Cameron - What a Guy!

James Cameron is becoming "instrumental" at building a 3D camera for a future Mars land-rover. Why - methinks - do they need to engage the famous James Cameron for this? Is he some expert? Perhaps. Not meaning to bash a fellow Canadian, but aren't there probably a bunch of other scientists in this area that would have more to contribute to this technlogy than James Cameron? More than likely, I'd think.

The one really odd thing about this article - and something just seems quite odd. The articles briefly mentions that they were going to scrap the concept of a 3D camera due to budgetary concerns. Huh? Budgetary concerns? Come on, they have to be kidding me! The current NASA budget is somewhere around $18 billion. How much would this camera really eat up of this budget? $1m? Perhaps? Yeah yeah - budget cuts across the board. I know the song and dance, but I also know that "budget cuts" can be one of the handiest excuses out there for killing projects, so call a spade a spade and just be truthful.

My Favourite Windows 7 WTF Moment

I haven't been using Windows 7 all that long - maybe only a couple of months on my new notebook. One day I'm at home - working away and I am typing away and presto-chango, my display rotates 90 degrees to the right :)

I'm thinking WTF did I just do. Tried to reconstruct my keystrokes and eventually determined the hotkey sequence that rotates the display 90 degrees (useful for monitors that also do so, not very useful when the monitor doesn't rotate as well!)

My Biggest Pet Peeve

Okay - really is stretching the limits of if this falls into my whole "TecHumanity" theme or not, but what the hell - it's my blog and I'll post what I want :)

Going for a walk at lunch today and within a two block radius, I spot two glaring spelling mistakes on signage. It doesn't matter if it's the owner that doesn't know how to spell, the printers obviously not only are spelling-challenged, but they've also not clicked into this REALLY neat function called a spell-checker.

The words in question: Chiken and privlage - how does someone look at that and not immediately know that there is something wrong with this picture? Totally burns my britches :) (reminder to self - do a spell check before posting this blog entry!)

And the Lines of Technology Blur Even More

In terms of entertainment, the television was always king (and movies as well, to make it a bit of a stretch).

One of the benefits of the Internet is that it also allowed access to many legal (and some not-so-legal) sites where entertainment material can be experienced. From the iTunes and the Napsters on music to all sorts of peer-to-peer network for pirated movies.

Now - it is not uncommon to be able to view archived episodes of your favourite episode online.

Although I haven't yet tried it, Rogers Cable has introduced an online Rogers on Demand service for viewing episodes and ordered movies via things other than the TV top decoder/converter.

This week, Playstation announced that one can purchase access to Major League Baseball games via the Playstation 3 and this has me thinking. With the PS3 we have a true entertainment device - not just a gaming machine. Not only can a wide range of games be played, but it also has a built-in BluRay drive and access to the Internet. Now with this MLB application, we now have streaming games. Let's not even get into how the PS3 can listen to music that exists on one of my three computers through the WiFi network.

I almost said that the introduction of the PS3 will almost make the television obsolete, but I guess that isn't going to happen until they have a build-in monitor!

Huh? Say What?

Story today is of a fellow who has bought and resold iPads for his friends and colleagues. Apparently, he goes to buy another one - sales clerk replies "Sorry sir, you've been cut-off". According to the sales clerk, the individual has reached the lifetime "maximum" of iPads that he's allowed to buy.

Huh? Really? Are there companies that DISCOURAGE sales? There must be something behind the story - I just don't get it.

Over the years, I've bought a ton of Dell Machines - for myself - and for friends and family. I can't imagine that Dell is anything but thrilled with my preference for Dell products.

This week, I received a gift certificate more Moore's Menswear as I had bought over $500 worth of clothes over the past few months. Can you imagine how odd it would have been to instead, having received a letter stating "I'm sorry, but you've bought 3 suits at Moore's - that's your lifetime maximum. Now go away!".

Too odd. I'm sure that there's probably a supply and demand sort of thing with the iPad (especially here in the Great White North), but to state that there is a limit? Truly a head-scratcher

New Age: The Vampyres vs The Werewolves

That battle-lines have been drawn, and for the most part, people have staked their claim in one camp or another. The Vampyres (the Blackberry users) are the insidous clan. The lure of the Crackberry is omni-present and it almost viral in nature. Certainly, having a Crackberry is one of the more elite status symbols. What's the demographic for the Blackberry? Well - to an extent, it crosses all lines in terms of race, age and gender, but the one demographic that strikes me as the one common denominator is that those with Blackberrys are either the business types or perhaps they live a life of priveledge to an extent.

The werewolves, they are the iPhone crew. Typically (but not always) the younger gen. They're the ones that probably have a love of music and want the convergency of an iPod and their music player.

Me, myself...I remain in my own camp - fully and totally uncommitted to either side. I have my iTouch - and I love it, but I'm not certain that I would have a need for an iPhone. As per some of my previous posts, convergency can be a good idea, but sometimes, not so much.

If I were to be lured, I'd have to see that I have an inclination to be a werewolf - don't think that I'd make a very good vampyre, there's no way that I could stay up that late :)

Spear-Phishing

One of the newer techniques employed by scammers is that of spear phishing. Phishing has been around for awhile and it’s defined as attempts by scammers to get email recipients to click on email links and redirecting them to their own web pages. These pages will mimic authentic sites and they will then try to entice the user to enter their account information. Amongst the more common types of phishing are these emails that appear to be from reputable banks threatening to cut off accounts if the account isn’t logged in. Most individuals are too sophisticated for these blatant attempts to steal credentials.

One of the newer attempts has been labeled as “spear-phishing”. Spear-phishing is where an individual specifically targets their victims – usually within a specific organization. With the proliferation of information on the Internet, it is very easy for a scammer to gather information particular to an organization such as: department names, manager names or perhaps even project names.

The scammers will then use methods to find individuals employed by a specific organization and target them for attack. The email itself has the same intent – it either has a malware “payload” (i.e. Trojan horse or other forms of mal-ware), or it attempts to convince the reader to click on a link. The premise behind spear-phishing is that by referencing projects, manager names or other organizational information, this form of social engineering will give the email a sense of credibility and increase the chance of the reader clicking on links.

The same ways of protecting yourself applies to phishing and spear-fishing. Never click on links – copy and paste the URL. If it’s a secure site, then look for the https: prefix or your browsers indicator that it’s a secured site and most of all, don’t trust an email just because of the subject or contents of the message

And Now for Something Completely Different...

Probably not something I would normally write about, but heck - I read a story today and thought to myself "meh - it kind of has technology in it - and it sure has the humanity angle in it, so what the heck"!

Woman in the UK allegedly fell off her Wii Fit Board. That in itself is certainly not newsworthy in the least. However, her claim is that with this accident, she damaged a nerve and has been diagnosed with...how did it go...."persistent arousal syndrome" or something like that? She claims that just her cellphone vibrating or the sound of the blender arouses her and she has up to 10 orgasms a day. What made my day - at the end of the article - it went on to say that this woman is single and...currently looking for a boyfriend lol.

Something tells me that a lot of men will read this and then go out and surprise their wife with a Wii Fit board :)

No...wait...upon reflection...I think that spontaneously giving your lovely wife a Wii Fit board is not necessarily the best thing to do if you want to "get some" :)

Technology and Warfare - a TOS Premonition?

Technology becomes an ever-increasing target as we become more and more reliant on it.

Although I can't state this as fact - yet - I am pretty sure that terrorist groups have recognized that cyber-attacks can be just as effective as "hard-attacks". The facility or capability to bring down a banking or law enforcement system must be an overwhelming temptation.

The other benefit is that these attacks can be conducted from anywhere. No longer do militants have to deal with the logistics of meeting/planning in person, technology is yet just another one tool in the kit of intimidation and nefarious criminal activity.

I'm reminded of this based on an article in PC World which states that the US Air Force is now training their recruits on basic cyber-warfare techniques and concepts.

As I read this article, I had a total flash-back to one particular Star Trek episode (THE Star Trek - TOS with Captain Kirk). This episode had the crew of the Enterprise (if memory serves!) beam down to the surface of a planet to mediate a war between two different groups of society. To his surprise, Kirk determines that HOW they conduct their war is that each side's computer randomly selects members of the opposing faction. If your number was "up", then you were required to calmly march to the extermination chamber.

I remember Kirk's soliloquy...the army heads of this faction justified this approach with something along the lines of "well - this is a more humane way to battle - less property damage, collateral damage, etc...". Kirk's response - in a very dramatic and extremely Kirk-ian way - was that this is why the war was lingering, because they weren't seeing the horrors of war, that they had lost the "humanity" of war.

I also recall after watching this episode how the general plot got the point across very eloquently and that it had the kind of logic that perhaps would make Spock proud.

I read this article today and instantly thought to myself - is there where war is headed?

Oh Come On - How Stupid and Gullible are People?

I'm getting kind of tired of these emails/IM that try to get others to forward the response to 10 friends - or whatever.

Today on Snopes, they have "busted" the myth that you can receive a $60 or $160 cell phone credit by forwarding a specific text message to 10 friends.

This has been going on for YEARS now. Have people not clued in yet? I guess not, because there must be people that fall for these and perpetuate the myth.

I clearly remember the early days of ICQ. We'd get a message saying something along the lines of "if you don't forward this IM to 10 other people, they'll think that your account in active and kill it". Bloody ridiculous that people would even for a second think that this is the case.

Wake up and give your head a shake, this Internet isn't a new thing and here's Rick's Rule of The Internet #1 - don't take ANYTHING at face value. Question it - and challenge it - and see if it holds weight.

Technodrool v1.0

Earlier this week, I was reading about the new USB 3.0 standard coming out and how it's throughput was estimated to be about 320 megabits/second (about 10x the throughput of USB 2.0).

Upon reading this, I was quite intrigued and started thinking how technology continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

Today, there's an article about a Japanese company (seems to be fairly well established - no fly-by-night sort of thing) who has announced a fibre-optic based communication link - basically, the future of USB.

First of all, what's interesting about this technology is that it's capabilities exceed that of the existing USB capabilities. Reportedly, the thought that this new fibre optic link will not only link USB devices, but also other devices with communication links. One of the primary links would be between the computer and the monitor.

For one thing, if this comes to pass, this might alleviate some of the proliferation of non-standard communication interfaces out there (one cable does all, sort of approach).

What really got my techno-drool factor going though is that the CURRENT expected throughput is about 10 gigabytes per second - an improvement 30 fold over USB 3.0 and 300x greater than the current standard USB 2.0.

Scientists there speculate that in the future, they expect the throughput to be up in the 30gbps range.

The (Legal) Eagle Has Landed!

The more that we get immersed in this technology, the more it appears that it has a drastic impact on all areas of our lives, and this is something that we don't always take into consideration.

Case in point, in the news today are two totally unrelated, but still "related" (if you follow me) stories as it revolves around the legalities of the Internet.

Story #1 - Copyrighted Materials (Part I)
Photographers have either filed, are in the process of filing, or are considering filing a suit against Google. The premise of this suit is that their photographs in books that Google has been scanning as part of their "open library" perspective are including copyrighted photographic images and the photographers are not being compensated accordingly.

Story #2 - Defamation of Character in a Digital Age
A 16 year old Arkansas boy is suing his mother for allegedly hacking his Facebook and posting slanderous comments about him.

Story #3 - Copyrighted Materials (Part II)
Okay - this one technically isn't related to my topic as it has nothing to do with the Internet, but the basic premise is there and I wonder if in context of story #1, if it has more relevance than would be originally believed.

This story is about Canadian (Toronto?) establishments that are playing music for their customers. The legal eagles are sending these restaurant and bar owners cease and desist orders and/or bills for having played copyrighted materials without compensating the artist.

This story, I'm especially interested in as my nephew is a lawyer in the entertainment industry and I'm sure that he'd have some interesting views on this.

Regardless, as I mentioned, story #3 doesn't have any "virtual" component...yet...but how long will it be before individuals and corporations "mine" the Internet looking for material that belongs to them and suing the pants off of the publisher looking for compensation?

I Would Never Have Even Considered!

Printer.com reported a study that was undertaken. Apparently (and this actually makes sense when you stop to think about it), the fonts that you choose can have affect your printing costs.

According to their study, two printers were setup to print two documents. One of the documents used Arial (a pretty common font) and the other used Century Gothic. Their study shows that the printer that printed the Century Gothic document used 31% less ink! Feel free to extrapolate the net cost savings per year and if it's just worthwhile or not.

Very interesting tid-bit for a rainy and dull Wednesday afternoon!

And The "Oops - My Bad" Award for 2010 Goes To...

...AOL!

Yes - I know that it's early in the year, but apparently they pulled the supreme technological boner.

Two years ago, they spent $850m to acquire Bebo as they were interesting in using the Bebo technology to beef up their Instant Messaging presence.

A scant 24 months later and AOL states that it is not economically feasible to enhance Bebo to the extent that they feel they could make a profit.

"Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space."

Umm...really? Did no-one actually do this type of analysis before making the purchase?

I'm guessing that someone in AOL Mergers and Aquisitions might have a few questions to answer.

0 A.I.

I am formally declaring this year 0 A.I. (after iPad Launch)!

I've read that anywhere between 300,000-500,000 of these suckers were sold during the first weekend. With a cost of between $500-800 a pop, this is a whole lot of sheckles for our friends at Apple.

Not to be a wise-guy or anything, but I also hear that there are starting to be a number of complaints from the Gamma-testers as it relates to the quality of the WiFi signal.

Those Sneaky Marketeers!

Read an article the other day. I don't believe that the technology quite is there yet, but the article suggested that they are developing a technology that would embed cameras in stores for the sole purpose of analyzing traffic patterns, and also (especially) to see where people congregate. I guess that the general concept is that be seeing the gazelles by the watering hole, marketing will get a better sense of where people's interests lay.

At first, I was concerned and disturbed by this - and to an extent, I still am.

However, the fact that we are monitored and taped more than we probably realize is probably an eventuality. I guess that I would not be the only person in the world who was caught on tape trying to adjust a wedgie - but still - geesh, this sort of thing just really sticks in my craw.

In certain aspects of our society, this taping in public life does serve a purpose. Helps us to find tapes of a lost child - for instance. Or perhaps, persons of a more nefarious nature have been identified on tape, so in this respect, it's a benefit.

I swear though, I'm going to profit off of this. I will buy stocks in a technology company and then organize hundreds of flash mobs to congregate around the products manufactured by companies just to drive the stock price up as the stores scramble to stock up on the product. Naw - not really, but heck - it could be fun to manipulate these marketing gurus.

And the Dawn of a New Age Begins! Gamma-Testers Beware..

With much anticipation, the iPad is on sale to the public today. I've never quite understood this almost pathological need to be the first on the block to own technology. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that it's always the best decision.

I can recall that it was years before I bought a CD player. While I didn't benefit from the technology as others did, by the same token, I didn't pay the sky-high prices of new tech - often with a healthy chunk of R&D built into the cost. Let alone the fact that the technology needs to mature and for the most part, when we jump on this technology bandwagon.

It's pretty well considered that alpha and beta testers are those that test a product of technology before it gets released - shake the bugs out sort of thing. I refer to these people that live off of instant gratification as Gamma testers - those who pay a healthy dollar to for all intents of purposes test the technology in the "real world".

Thanks, but no thanks - not for me.

Maybe I'm technologically astute - or maybe I'm just a cheap Scotsman that wants to hold onto my dollars for a little bit longer.

We'll All Turn Into Mush!

As good as technology gets - for everything that it does for us, I'm becoming more and more convinced that the downside is that it can and will turn us into mush, in all aspects of the word.

Today, I was filling out a contest entry form and the skill testing question was 50/2*4+11-7. Instead of figuring out what should be a pretty simple formula, I whip out the handy-dandy calculator. In some respects, isn't technology making it too easy not to exercise basic skills?

Along the same lines, the other day, I was at the store, buying bus tickets for my son. The tickets cost $11.50 and I handed the cashier a $20 bill. I was astounded when she pulled out her calculator to figure out the change due.

Unreal - totally and truly. So many of us are just too guilty of being lazy.

In 500 years, we will have mutated to the extend where we don't have legs and we will just have big thumbs for texting - that's it.

Is It a Concern? You Bet!

Story down in the US where a lady was in the casino playing the penny slots. The slot machine clearly stated that the maximum payout was something like $100k. This woman "won" $43m and now is considering legal action. Casino claims that it was obviously a mistake with the VLT and that they are legally covered for things like this. Said woman is insistent at getting the whole kit-n-kaboodle (not bloody likely!).

Granted, I have no idea how many slot machines there are throughout the US, nor do I have any idea as to how many plays there would be in a given day. If I had to guess (I'll see if I can find out), I'd say that there are perhaps 1,000,000 machines. Let's say on average, there are 1,000 plays on a machine, so we'd be looking at possibly there being 1,000,000,000 plays each day.
(Author's note: based on one website, in 2004, there were about 790,000 slot machines in the US, so it would look like my original estimate was at least ballpark accurate!)

Sure - it's reasonable to expect that if there a billion plays per day, there's gonna be a few bugs, but it seems to me that there are way too many stories of this machines issuing inaccurate payouts. I'm curious why - one wouldn't think that calculating the payout would be all that complicated - it would seem like simple equations to me, so I'm curious as to how and why there are so many mistakes.

Thursday, April 1

Yes - that time of year - one that I often dread because it seems like each and every year, someone, somehow manages to sucker me in - even just once.

In the news today, there are a myriad of stories about some of the more inventive hoaxes and as I read these articles, I see how even things like April Fool's Day is permeated by technology.

I'm not talking about the lame hoaxes - such as "RickRolling" (by the way, it's interesting that this particular hoax can only be done in the electronic world. For the uninitiated, rickrolling is the phenomenan where person A (or a website for that matter) sends out a link to some page of interest. When the user clicks on the link, instead of the suggested content, the user is directed to Youtube where a video of Rick Astley performing "Never Going to Give You Up" is played. This bait-and-switch is old and it's lame and probably a bit tired.

One of the best technology related hoaxes that I read today was that The Guardian newspaper (British tabloid) announced that they were going to rewrite ALL news archives in the form of tweets. Some of the examples that they would rewrite history are as follows:
- "1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!"
- "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more"
- "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

Honestly - I think that this is just totally bloody creative and I love it. If anyone has any tech related hoaxes, please feel free to share :)