How tech loosens our grip on reality

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

We cannot really understand yet how much technology has changed our lives. Those of us in our forties or older have the advantage of having seen a shift from an essentially analogue world to a digital one. We have seen interpersonal communication move from a pipe dream to a daily, second-by-second reality.

Today’s yoof have grown up in a world of Facebook, instant email, IM, smartphones in their pocket. They cannot function without an IP connection. It is more important to them than food. It is the new era drug that each of us consume. They know no different.

Thus it is particularly sad to see what happens when it goes wrong. And two very lovely people’s lives get turned upside down. Go over to the Vexentricity blog and read how a dependency on technology has ripped a family apart. And ask yourself this: honestly, how close are you to that reality too? And is that somewhere you want to be, or feel you ought to be? Or even should be?

What’s next for Apple after Steve Jobs?

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

The news that Steve Jobs has resigned the position of CEO and that Tim Cook, the long term COO, is taking over the position, should come as no surprise to anyone following both Apple and Jobs. Steve Jobs has been battling cancer for many years. That he remained in the position of CEO for so long shows his love of the work, and the company he both built and then rebuilt upon his return in the 90s.

Although he doesn’t mention his health in his resignation letter, it’s the only possible reading of the first paragraph: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”

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How a cheap graphics card could crack your password in under a second

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

I was pointed in the direction of a blog posting talking about the use of GPU processors to launch brute-force attacks on passwords. GPUs are extremely good at this sort of workload, and the price/performance ratio has changed dramatically over the past few years. What might have seemed impossible even 36 months ago is now perfectly do-able on your desktop computer.

In this report, the author takes a fairly standard Radeon 5770 graphics card (you’ll find it on our A-List under Value Graphics Card), and uses a free tool called ighashgpu to run the brute-force password cracking tools on the GPU. To provide a comparison point with the capabilities of a standard desktop CPU, he uses a tool called “Cain & Abel”.

The results are startling. Working against NTLM login passwords, a password of “fjR8n” can be broken on the CPU in 24 seconds, at a rate of 9.8 million password guesses per second. On the GPU, it takes less than a second at a rate of 3.3 billion passwords per second.

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Will Apple grab Samsung’s game-changing display?

Friday, May 13th, 2011

The news that Samsung is readying production of a 10.1in display for tablets, running at a resolution of 2560×1600 pixels, is a game changer. This is 300dpi on a near A4-sized display device.

Without question, this changes the rules for display of information.

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Why on Earth is Microsoft buying Skype?

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

So Microsoft is buying skype for $8bn. Whether that figure includes the $686m of debt that Skype has isn’t clear. What is clear is that this is a huge amount of money for a company that has a turnover of $859m and an operating loss of $7m.

What is staggering is that Microsoft has bought it. Skype would have been a great fit for Apple. A great fit for Facebook. But Microsoft? Hello?

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£400 of freebies? Pull the other one, Microsoft

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

StartUp Britain is an initiative to help startup businesses in the UK. Clearly this is a good thing in principle though some have suggested – not least my Real World Computing comrade Kevin Partner -  that some of the sponsors and backers of this Government-applauded but privately backed venture are rather in it for themselves, judging by the help and offers that have been made public.

However, things hit a new low with Microsoft’s offer: it is offering “free technology resources worth up to £400 per company”, which sounds pretty good to me at first glance.

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BackupAssist and a neat U-turn on Twitter

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

Ah, the power of the accursed Twitter! A few minutes ago, @zensoftware tweeted that its Backup Assist Version 4 product was at end of life.

The BackupAssist website says: “Version 4 of BackupAssist was released in May 2007 and we have enjoyed providing you with support for this version over the past few years. We’ve made many improvements and additions to BackupAssist since then, including the release of BackupAssist v5 in October 2008.

“After releasing BackupAssist v6 last year, and adding even more functionality to the software, we decided that it was time to hang up the boots for version 4 in early 2011. While you can continue using BackupAssist v4, we will no longer be providing technical support for this version and you can no longer purchase upgrades for any of your version 4 licenses; you will instead need to purchase new BackupAssist v6 licenses at the standard price.”

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Twitter data demand highlights cloud control problems

Monday, January 10th, 2011

I see from the news that Twitter has been forced to bend over and succumb to a thorough Data Rogering by the US Government.

I see from the news that Twitter has been forced to bend over and succumb to a thorough data rogering by the US Government.

It appears that some foreign nationals are up in arms about this.

Can I say “I told you so”? For over two years, I have been raising the question of the territoriality and legal framework of data held by US companies, especially when the data is held on US territory.

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Yet another Microsoft storage disaster

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

So Microsoft has decided to kill off the Drive Extender technology in the next release of Windows Home Server, codenamed Vail (and the other concotions of the same basic recipe: Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, codenamed Aurora).

This was the one bit of cleverness in Windows Home Server that really appealed to the home user. Buy a four-bay server like the cute little HP Home Server, and add more discs when you needed more space.

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BSM website drives me up the wall

Friday, November 5th, 2010

Shopping on the web is a wonderful thing. You can buy just about anything if you look. It’s easy to fill in the forms, hand over the credit card details, and wait for the courier to deliver the package.

Even better, you can put in a different delivery address and have things sent to family and friends. This is especially useful for birthday gifts.

So this morning, we decided to buy some driving lessons for my nephew who will be 17 in a few weeks. I went to the BSM website, chose a gift package of lessons, filled in the details of my home address, credit card and the address of his school where he is a boarder. The transaction completed with no problems, and I received a confirmation email, containing all the information.

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