First Look: VMware ThinApp 4.0
September 10, 2008
Dave Bailey, vnunet.com, Wednesday 10 September 2008 at 18:06:00
ThinApp delivers secure applications through sandboxing
Launched in June, ThinApp 4.0 is the first iteration of the application VMware acquired through its takeover of ThinStall in January….
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Attention span
August 15, 2008
By Marc Settle
Reporter, BBC iPM
As the age at which children start to get familiar with computers and the net gets ever lower, questions are starting to be asked about what that exposure is doing to our children’s brains and their ability to concentrate.
These questions are ones which eminent neuroscientist Baroness Greenfield says needs to be confronted. The director of the Royal Institution says the “sensory-laden environment” of computers could result in people “staying in the world of the small child”.
Professor Greenfield has spent a lifetime researching the physiology of the brain, and now thinks that there could be a link between the attention span of children and the growing use of computers.
In an interview for Radio 4’s iPM she said: “The last 10 years have seen a three-fold increase in the prescription of the drug Ritalin, a drug used for Attention Deficit Disorder. One asks why
“Why suddenly is there greater demand for a drug for attentional problems” she asked. “This might, and I stress might, be something to do with the increased exposure of young children to unsupervised and lengthy hours in front of a screen.”
"The technology is creating an environment that is answer rich, but we’re question poor"Susan Greenfield
iPM: Listen to the interview with Baroness Greenfield
Baroness Greenfield wondered if the cause was growing computer use.
“Could it be, and this is just a suggestion which I think we should look into, could it be if a small child is sitting in front of a screen pressing buttons and getting reactions quickly for many hours, they get used to and their brains get used to rapid responses” she said.
If children do not have stories read to them and have little practice of concentrating for long periods this could effect how they handle the sedate pace of school life, said Baroness Greenfield.
She asked: “Could it be that they then have to sit still for half an hour and of course they’re not used to that because they’re used to the rapid interaction with the screen, and could it - again a question - be that they are fidgety and hyperactive and then diagnosed as having a disorder”
The brain, says the distinguished neuroscientist, changes all the time - but it is very sensitive to the environment its in, and so it might be affected by the continual use of computers.
“What we need to question is this: are we putting people into the optimum environment How can we create an environment which will pre-dispose the brain to react in ways we consider ideal” she said.
“The technology is creating an environment that is answer rich, but we’re question poor.”
She contrasts the life of modern-day children with the generation which grew up without computers, who had to work to find answers by going to a library to look things up.
Baroness Greenfield also claims that the distinction has been lost between information and knowledge - with the facts provided by easy-accessed information losing the context necessary for knowledge.
Her views are echoed by the writer Nicholas Carr in his recent essay “Is Google making us stupid” that was published in Atlantic Monthly. In the article Mr Carr claims that his mind is changing as a result of greater computer use. “Deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle,” he said.
But a contrasting view comes from the philosopher Julian Baggini, who has written that the fear of change and of children becoming “degenerate aliens” is as old as parenthood, an “age-old anxiety” which he accused Baroness Greenfield of dignifying.
In response, the professor told iPM that she would rather not be complacent and “end up with a world that we don’t want”.
Baroness Greenfield can be heard on BBC Radio 4 at 17.30 on Friday 15 August 2008.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation
End nears in Facebook legal row
August 14, 2008
Facebook has won approval to acquire rival ConnectU despite an appeal against an agreed settlement.
In 2004 ConnectU’s founders sued Facebook claiming creator Mark Zuckerberg took his idea for a social networking site from them.
The lawsuit was settled in early 2008 but ConnectU claims Facebook misrepresented its value during talks.
The judge has told ConnectU to stick to the agreed settlement and transfer its stock to Facebook.
The row over valuation has been caused by Microsoft taking a 0m (£128m) stake in Facebook in October 2007 that valued the site, on paper, at billion.
Facebook said that figure should not be used to rate the company’s worth as that valuation was specific to Microsoft’s preferred stock and the business deal surrounding it. Facebook said its real valuation stood at -4bn.
Court papers have shown that as part of the approved settlement, Facebook agreed to give ConnectU’s owners an undisclosed amount of money and Facebook stock.
In return ConnectU’s principals agreed to turn over to Facebook all the stock they held in ConnectU.
In their appeal ConnectU co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss along with fellow partner Divya Narendra claimed that implementing the agreement now would let Facebook disrupt the appeals process.
Judge James Ware of the US district court in San Jose, California ruled that before ConnectU’s appeal can be heard, the settlement made earlier this year has to go through.
“The longer the court delays in enforcing the settlement between the parties, the more like the value of the consideration subject of the settlement will change,” he wrote in his judgement. “Any further delay in enforcing the settlement will create a serious risk of prejudice to Facebook, as well as to ConnectU.”
He added: “This means the status quo cannot be preserved with a stay.”
He originally rejected ConnectU’s claims of fraud in June prompting the appeal which he has pledged to hear.
The ConnectU founders sued fellow Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 accusing him of stealing their idea for the company following work he did on a dating site for them in 2003.
Facebook said it would not comment on the case. ConnectU did not return calls for comment.
Meanwhile the Winklevoss brothers are competing for rowing gold in the Beijing Olympics. They came second in their semi-final to win a place in the men’s pairs final.
Recent figures by Comscore show Facebook is now the world’s biggest and fastest growing social networking site with 132 million unique visitors in June
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation
Caucasus hacking
August 14, 2008
By Neil Arun
BBC News
Armed with computers, unseen ranks of hackers are fanning conflict in the Caucasus.
Internet users in Russia and Georgia have attacked vital websites in each other’s countries, in a virtual echo of battles being fought on the ground by troops and tanks.
Several Georgian government portals have been defaced or forced offline by hackers allegedly based in Russia.
Visitors to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili’s website were recently routed to a page portraying him as a modern-day Hitler.
Georgia’s parliament and foreign ministry sites have also repeatedly been disabled, allegedly by attacks from networks of hijacked computers.
Hackers from Georgia have meanwhile been blamed for targeting the websites of Russian news outlets and the separatist government of South Ossetia, which Russia supports.
"Where extortion or fraud is involved, you can follow the money trail… But politically-motivated attacks are almost impossible to police"
Bill Thompson
Technology critic
Internet security experts say it was inevitable that a conflict fired by separatism in the Caucasus should spill into cyberspace.
The republics of the former Soviet Union are, along with China and Brazil, major centres of cyber-crime, according to Alex Shipp of the email security firm, MessageLabs.
While the Chinese specialise in industrial espionage and the Brazilians are adept at online financial fraud, Mr Shipp says Russian criminals dominate the market in online tools tailored for amateur hackers.
“Several Russian sites specialise in selling software that would-be cyber-criminals can download,” he says.
‘Dark side’
Russia’s association with cyber-crime dates back to the demise of the former Soviet Union - an event that roughly coincided with the dawn of the internet era in the early 1990s.
For thousands of youths who came of age as communism collapsed, computers symbolised the new spirit of enterprise.
Treating programming as a tool for self-empowerment, these eager amateurs eventually became skilled software engineers.
They learnt their expertise, in part, from a brilliant earlier generation of Soviet-era developers, says the BBC News website’s technology correspondent, Mark Ward.
These older programmers had devised clever software to sidestep the shortcomings of the clunky communist computers they had been forced to use.
Although Russia’s new engineers had skills to match the brightest minds of Silicon Valley, they earned far smaller sums than their peers in the West.
Bored and underpaid, many turned their talents to hacking.
Gradually, they attracted new paymasters from the thriving post-Soviet underworld. As the gangsters harnessed the hackers’ skills, the profits from cyber-crime grew.
The result, according to technology critic Bill Thompson, is a business that today resembles the “dark side of Silicon Valley”.
Hacking made easy
The people accused of attacking government websites in Georgia’s war with Russia are using many methods pioneered by the cyber-criminals.
However, it is far harder to trace hackers who are driven by patriotism rather than profit.
"The very notion of crime only exists in places where you have the law and the law is applied"Anton Nosik
Russian internet pioneer
“Where extortion or fraud is involved, you can follow the money trail,” Bill Thompson says. “But politically-motivated attacks are almost impossible to police.”
Hacking technology is also becoming increasingly accessible.
The most common form of attack uses networks of hijacked computers, or botnets, that besiege a site with more traffic than it can handle, eventually forcing it offline.
Such “denial of service” attacks are often the work of amateurs, following instructions downloaded from the internet.
Experts are more commonly responsible for “deface hacking” - attacks that manipulate the content on a secure website or divert traffic from it.
Lawless space
According to Anton Nosik, a Russian businessman and internet pioneer, most hackers tend to be teenagers with broadband internet and limitless time on their hands.
He says websites hosted in countries with relatively small, under-developed networks are often most vulnerable to attack.
The Georgian government, he says, ought to consider moving its websites to providers in the US or Western Europe if it hopes to reduce its exposure to attack.
In doing so, it would follow an example set by websites that support separatists from the Russian republic of Chechnya - also frequently targeted by hackers.
“Websites run by Chechen militants are hosted in western European countries with relatively large, secure networks - capable of handling larger volumes and less easily taken off air,” Mr Nosik says.
But, he warns, there is no foolproof defence against the most determined hackers, for whom Russia remains a haven.
“The very notion of crime only exists in places where you have the law and the law is applied,” he says.
Global laws governing cyberspace are still being devised. In nations waging war, they are least likely to be applied.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation
Smart picks for entertainment-focused smartphones
August 14, 2008
Sony Ericsson W760
The Walkman is back — and this time it’s in the form of a smartphone. The Sony Ericsson W760 Walkman phone (5 with no plan; www.sonyericsson.ca) delivers a cutting-edge music experience with an intuitive interface for easy navigation, stereo speakers, FM radio and support for broadband-like HSPA speeds to download songs in seconds. Other features of this slider phone include a 3.2-megapixel camera, GPS (with Google Maps) and 3-D gaming with motion-sensing control.
Apple iPhone 3G
Available through Rogers for 9 (8GB) or 9 (16GB), the eagerly-anticipated iPhone 3G (www.apple.ca) smartphone combines all the features found in the original — music, photo and video playback, two-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi/GSM/EDGE for wireless surfing and downloads (including tracks from the iTunes Store) — but has added support for high-speed 3G (HSDA) connectivity, integrated GPS for directions and location-based mobile services, and support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. Oh, and it’s a phone, too. (Pictured on Page 1)
HTC Touch
Available through Bell Mobility or Telus, the HTC Touch (.99 on a three-year term; www.htc.com) is a Windows Mobile 6-powered smartphone offering smooth synchronization with a PC’s Windows Media Player and a 2.8-inch touch-screen with TouchFLO technology for fingertips to intuitively access media, such as music, audiobooks, podcasts, photos and videos (a 1-GB SanDisk memory card is included). Other features include a two-megapixel camera, mobile e-mail, hands-free speaker and the ability to view and edit Microsoft Office documents such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.
Nokia N95
What would you do with eight gigabytes of memory: carry 2,000 songs, 20 hours of video or tens of thousands of photos? You can decide with the compact Nokia N95 (9.99 with three-year Rogers Wireless plan; www.nokia.ca), which ships with the most memory of any smartphone in Canada. Along with its five-megapixel camera (with 20x zoom and MPEG-4 VGA video capture) and support for Nokia’s N-Gage library of 3-D games, the N95 slider phone also supports Rogers’ fast HSPA (3G) network including face-to-face video calling with other compatible phones.
BlackBerry Pearl 8120
Research in Motion’s (www.rim.com) first Wi-Fi-enabled phone supports Rogers’ “Home Calling Zone” feature, which lets you seamlessly switch between regular cellphone calls and Wi-Fi calls when in a hotspot. The BlackBerry Pearl 8120 (9.99 on a three-year term with voice/data plan) is also no slouch for entertainment seekers, thanks to its expandable microSD cards to store music, photos, videos and games; two-megapixel camera; and support for SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry that lets you watch your local TV anywhere in the world (Slingbox required). (Pictured on Page 1)
LG Vu
Similar to the iPhone, the LG Vu (9.99 on a three-year Rogers Wireless term; www.lg.ca) sports a high-resolution touch screen on its three-inch surface, but with subtle vibration feedback to confirm when you’ve pressed the soft keys. The LG Vu’s sleek body measures just 13 millimetres thick, svelte enough to keep discreetly in your shirt pocket or handbag, ready to pull out as you need it in more than 200 countries, as this quad-band GSM phone works around the globe. Integrated 3G support also ensures fast web surfing and download speeds. Photos or videos taken with the integrated two-megapixel camera/camcorder can be stored on removable memory cards.
Privacy worry over location data
August 14, 2008
By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News Website, Silicon Valley
Privacy advocates are warning of the dangers of rushing headlong into using location based services.
The Centre for Digital Democracy told the BBC that “while these services will be a powerful force in our lives they are a potential privacy nightmare.”
The Centre’s comments follow Yahoo’s launch of Fire Eagle which lets users update and manage information about where they are.
“Hard privacy protection questionsneed to be asked,” said Jeff Chester.
“These services are all being sold to consumers as only providing real benefit.No oneis talking about the fact they areabout building and collecting more data ,not just about the content you like but where you go and where you are at the moment.”
Fire Eagle, which has just been opened up to the public, helps manage location information for websites and for any device that has internet access.
“This is a way for the user to take their location to the web, for every site on the web to become geo-aware and to respond to where users are,” explained Tom Coates head of product at Yahoo’s start-up project, Brickhouse.
He described the open platform like being a “switchboard that anyone can build on top of and we are the bit that helps connect to other services out there”.
So far more than 50 third-party developers have signed up to offer Fire Eagle to their users, including Pownce, a micro-blogging service, brightkite, a location based social network, and DOPPLR which links travellers.
User control
Yahoo said the service gives users complete control over their information and over which applications have access to their location. Users can also control whether an application can track their exact location, their ZIP or postcode or just the city they are in.
Every 45 days, the service will send users an email to reauthorize the sharing of their location with the enabled applications.
“Fire Eagle is neutral and open and the main thing we do is give people control to choose how much information they want to share and change it at any time,” said Mr Coates.
“We only store your current information and don’t keep any historical logs.That information will stay there until you over ride it or change it.”
Some blogs note however that while users can purge information from Fire Eagle, this will not delete location data collected over time by authorised sites.
“Fire Eagle’s features are beyond our comfort level as far as the average internet users is concerned,” wrote Christian Zibreg of TGDaily.com.
The problem for privacy watchers is that privacy policies across the web are all very different and using a service through a third party could raise some real issues.
“Part of the problem is that Yahoo can’t control what the companies they partner with do with the information,” said Paul Stephens head of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
“While this is an opt in service you have to be clear about the consequences of what you are opting in to.Privacy policies differ from website to website and they can be changed without warning. ”
Mr Coates said as an added protection Fire Eagle lets you hide your location at times and even lie about where you are if you want to.
“People are social beings and people lie, they tell fibs.They want to buy presents for their partners, go for job interviews and have secret and illicit affairs.
“People live rich and varied lives and it’s not our job to flatten that out.We are here to make the world respond to you.”
‘Targeted adverts’
While location based services are seen as the next big thing, Yahoo decided not to use it for any of its own products at this stage because it felt it would not reach the critical mass needed to be viable.
But Yahoo co-founder David Filo told the BBC if the service is a big hit, the company will add it to its products.
“If we get millions of consumers using the service and have thousands of applications, we think it will be good for Yahoo.
“We want our services to be location aware as well and obviously the more consumers that are willing to use it the more we will be able to tailor our services to them and the better it is for us.”
Greg Sterling of SearchEngineLand said the added benefits of location information offers great opportunities for advertisers.
“Advertisers have yet to catch up to the possibility this space offers and Fire Eagle makes it that more explicit for them so I think we will see more targeted adverts coming into being that can take advantage of a person’s location.”
“This is certainly helping connect the online and offline world of consumers.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation
Fujifilm Finepix Budget J-Series
August 13, 2008
Fujifilm Finepix Budget J-Series
Fujifilm has recently announced four new budget Finepix J-series compact cameras. The J100, J110W, J120 and J150W, all will include 10 Megapixel CCD but each vary in LCD size and lenses. They feature face detection system that maxes out at six people in the frame, and includes automatic red-eye correction. Movie mode supports 640 x 480 and 320 x 240 resolutions at 30 frames per second with mono sound, stored in Motion JPEG format. The J100 and J110W have a 2.7’ LCD screen and the FinePix J150W and J120 offer the bigger 3’ LCD screen. The J-Series will be available with price range from 9.95 to 9.95, all of which are scheduled to ship in September.
(Via The Digital Camera Blog.)
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