Sneaky work
Say what you like about the Patriot Act, and there’s plenty to be said, but it is going to hurt US business.
Handing over the right for the government to snoop through information held on corporate servers is bad enough, but as we move to more web-focussed applications it could prove disastrous.
UKNations spy on each other – always have, always will. But the focus today is increasingly on economic espionage. It always happened, remember Concordski, but it’s moved up a step and several European companies have complained that the US and UKare using the Echelon system to win contracts.
Now Google is facing trouble because it may be holding business sensitive information that the government can access at will. It’s a quandary that could stall the whole model of web applications.
March 26, 2008 at 02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (67) | TrackBack
Colossus no more
That the World War
Two era computer Colossus was beaten at decryption doesn't really come as a
surprise to many, given the current state of processing power.
Nevertheless it was an interesting exercise to rebuild the thing in the first place, given the paucity of information about the device. Its creator, Tommy Flowers, arguably did more than nay other Briton to bring a speedy end to the war and that so few know anything about him is a crying shame.
The reason for this lies mainly in the Cold
War and the paranoia it spawned. The very existence of Colossus wasn't even
acknowledged until after the news the Electronic
Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) had been built – leading to
endless transatlantic arguments among geeks as to who built the first computer.
Flowers was awarded a small honour and a payment of just £1,000 after the war's end – which was less than he spent to build the thing in the first place. He was then forced to burn his blueprints and watch as the Colossus machines were broken up to ensure their secrets were kept safe. A sad end for an inspired idea.
November 16, 2007 at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack
AMD and Microsoft showcase Vista (video)
Earlier this week, AMD and Microsoft hosted a joint event in San Francisco to show how Windows Vista will be presented on a variety of devices.
AMD exec John Taylor gave us a tour of his gadgets and showed off a few examples of how Vista looks and feels on systems ranging from mid-level consumer desktops to high-end gaming monsters to tablet PCs.
Videos of the demos are available after the jump.
January 27, 2007 at 01:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Love is in the air at LinuxWorld
The bags are packed and your friendly neighbourhood Silicon Valley Sleuth will soon be leaving the warmer surroundings of the Valley for Boston to check out the latest news and buzz at Linuxworld 2005. Kicking off on Valentine's day, the Linux-Lovefest is sure to attract a lot of attention from both the community and vendors alike.
Pre-show buzz is already building around the launch of Red Hat's new Enterprise Linux 4.0 and VNUnet's sister title IT Week will, on Monday, be posting one of the first reviews of the product. So be sure to check back to this blog, VNUnet and IT Week to get all the latest news and information to emerge from the show.
February 11, 2005 at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Boob or breakthrough?
It's hardly big news for a dotcom gambling company to be brash and up-front with its advertising, but GoldenPalace.com has taken this to a new level. The site has paid £422 to win an unorthodox eBay auction which gives it the right to rent the cleavage of Scottish woman Angel Brammer. The deal means that the online casino's domain name will be affixed to the 27 year-old's ample breasts for 15 days in the form of a temporary tattoo. It is, as yet, unclear whether the terms of the auction contain clauses preventing Ms Brammer wrapping up warmly to fight off the Scottish winter, which, would we guess, will limit the firm's 'brand exposure'. For GoldenPalace.com, the stunt follows on from its purchase of the astonishingly expensive 'Virgin Mary toasted cheese sandwich' which cost the firm a cool $28,000.
February 4, 2005 at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Never look a gift horse in the mouth
Although we are still smarting from the historically low value of our dollar compared with the euro or pound, it was with some amusement that we spotted Dell's site in the UK offering a dual Xeon server for the princely sum of £99.
Even with our terrible exchange rate this is still under 200 bucks for a decent bit of server power. A PowerEdge 1600SC comes with a 2.40GHz Xeon, 256MB of ECC DDR SDRAM, and an 80GB hard drive to be precise.
Sadly, and we guess somewhat predictably, the web page displaying the "fantastic deal" has now been corrected.
We assumed that this was just a Kodak-esque cock up and that Dell would blame some 'technical hitch' and then quietly bury the offending web designer who got the numbers wrong under the car park of its European factory in Ireland.
But it would seem that we have done the hardware giant a disservice. UK news site The Inquirer reports that some of its readers, who managed to get there early, have bought these bargain servers. One reader apparently got two, while another claims to have ordered five.
You know what they say about never looking a gift horse in the mouth.
December 15, 2004 at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
The power of Google's Suggestion
You are in a darkened room. Concentrate on our voice, resistance is futile.....now you are under: Google is in control, we know what you are looking for let us help you.
Although fellow Silicon Valley Sleuth Dan Gilmor seemed less than impressed by the fledgling Google Suggestion service, the power of suggestion has always been fascinating and slightly frightening to human beings.
Although we have all laughed at people under hypnosis pretending to be chickens and dogs there has always been, for me, a darker side to the art of persuasion.
So I was very interested to test out Google's service to see how close it was to matching my search requirements. Starting with the letter S, Google returned with millions of pages, second guessing my search with the most popular pages. After adding another letter the search was amazingly refined. But strangely adding a third letter to this combination brought back absolutely nothing.
Perhaps the algorithm had a headache.
December 14, 2004 at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
PeopleSoft goes down, not with a bang but a whimper
Larry Ellison has huffed and he has puffed and he has finally managed to blow down PeopleSoft's board. After nearly 18 months of bitter wrangling, Oracle's chief exec has finally got his way and, for a cool $10bn, had his takeover approved. The agreement of PeopleSoft's management means that Oracle will not have to swallow the bitter poison pill designed to make hostile takeovers financially unpalatable. However, the approach has not suddenly become amicable overnight. PeopleSoft's customers are still, rightly, worried over what the deal means for them. They are especially worried over Ellison's sudden and surprising revelation that the database giant will be developing a "merged product line" to which all customers will be migrated. What happens to those who do not want to be migrated is not as yet specified. Analyst firm Ovum issued a statement pointing out that this product merger was a surprise and "somewhat at odds" with what has been said before, when Oracle opted for a softly softly approach with PeopleSoft customers, who must now be wondering where on earth they stand.
December 13, 2004 at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Are Mobile Phone Users The New Smokers?
Comparing the changing attitudes to smoking in the US with the rise of mobile phone usage, Douglas Rushkoff thinks mobile phones could go the way of the cigarette.
Although mobies will not be banned like the ciggy, he quite rightly observes that similar laws in the US that have been introduced in the UK to limit and restrict the usage of mobile phones. While some measures are quite rightly introduced to improve safety--like banning usage whilst driving (without a headset etc) other measures are more to do with social courtesy.
In New York, Sleuth discovers from Rushkoff's post that (in a Yoda voice) "Cell Wars," begun have they, as a backlash to bad mobile phone behaviour is starting to rise.
If this trend continues, perhaps a new niche market for the mobile manufacturers is to put lighters in mobiles for smokers that have to go outside to call and smoke?
December 10, 2004 at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
When news goes open source
Aiming to do to news reporting what Linux did to Sun Microsystems, the Wikimedia Foundation has put up a demo of their new Wikinews service. The service plans to offer news in the same collaborative way by which the WikiPedia encyclopaedia is created.
A process of peer review will create accurate news reporting. Just like with development of open source software, the concept of "many eyeballs" should safeguard against mistakes and shady ethics.
The service certainly has the potential to add to existing news reporting. With large events – take the current political turmoil in Ukraine – citizen reporters can directly tell the story from the streets, adding colour and flavour to the reports by the large press agencies.
Professional reporters however will raise a few eyebrows about the service’s lack of journalistic standards and safeguards. Although the process of peer review will correct mistakes, there is little to ensure those mistakes from showing up in the early stages of a story’s life.
"The incentive for behaviour in a wiki is to write in such a way that your writing can survive," Wiki co-founder Jimmy Wales told Wired News. "The only way it can survive is if your writing is acceptable to an extremely wide audience."
Last time I checked, writing news stories wasn’t a popularity contest but about accuracy, fact checking and informing readers. That’s why publications have publishers who worry about making money and journalists who focus on spending it.
November 29, 2004 at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Spanish
