Category Archives: IT

2011 was a fun year in computer security..

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Now this sounds like an interesting BCS event covering cyber-security with Gareth Lapworth from De Montfort University, clearly surveying the collateral damage with an expert eye. Should be epic!

“2011 was a fun year in computer security. The term “epic” doesn’t quite do it enough justice, but it’s the best term we’ve got. The lulz were had by the bad guys, the overtime was pocketed by the good guys and it was gripping for those sitting on the sidelines.

“One of the most public and explosive attacks of the year was aimed directly at the Sony corporation, not just once, but at least four different times. In order to solve their problems they simply laid off a significant number of their security team. Epic.

“2011 also saw a rise in malware related attacks. Whilst most computer users were worried about receiving viruses and attempting to solve that problem, computer security dudes in the power and water industries were trying to secure centrifuges and utility supplies. They failed. Miserably. Epic.

“It was a win for those that did manage to secure their computer systems, but not those that chose Symantec anti virus. We found out recently that the bad guys had access to the source code of some versions of this software. Of course, the same bad guys helped the world by uncovering that the Indian government requested that Apple, RIM and Nokia placed back doors in their hardware/software solutions. It’s always pleasing to know that a government has access to all of your private data. Epic.

“Don’t have nightmares, though. William Hague wants you to know that we’ll strike first in any cyber war. Super Epic.

“This lecture discusses some cyber security related activities and gives a taste of things yet to come in the next 12 months. It is hoped that you will walk away from this lecture with a feeling of helplessness and fear that will instil in you the correct level of paranoia when conducting yourself online.”

It appears Gareth has left out the FBI arrest of 16 suspected ‘Anonymous’ hackers in July, not long after the PayPal Twitter account was hacked. Which in turn came not long after news that PayPal had dropped online banking for WikiLeaks.

Also see ‘Six security forecasts for 2012′ written by the BCS’s David Lacey, starting with Space weather creates concern: “…increased solar activity will probably cause a few minor annoyances to GPS users. The larger concern, however, is that it might take out mobile communications, power supplies or perhaps anything with a GPS chip. Not quite Y2K in impact, but longer, less predictable and much less researched and publicised”.

Inception movie explained programmatically

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Inception movie explained programmatically — scrapped off the site by me; constructed by A R Karthick.

This URL has Read-Only access

README

Programmatic representation of the Brilliant movie: INCEPTION by the Genius Director THY name is Christopher Nolan!

My tribute to Nolan in “C” Language and a bit of assembly (x86) as the inception is done using x86 code morphing so that Fischer wakes up thinking that the thought was originated from his mind. Running the program would unravel the entire sequence in the movie. Reading the code would explain the movie Programmatically.

In order to compile the code, just type: “make” And run the code by typing: “./inception” , to see the sequencing in the movie and have the code exit with Fischers Inception thought planted by the Inception team!

-Karthick (a.r.karthick@gmail.com)

A new OS for your Android mobile?

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Just been sent a link to this interesting open source news – that I have an option to replace my current Android OS on my T-Mobile G1 with a firmware alternative called CyanogenMod. That doesn’t happen every morning! Note that the controversy about including Google apps, which appears to have been resolved..

CyanogenMod is an aftermarket firmware for four families of cell phones—HTC Dream (marketed as T-Mobile G1 in Europe and the US, and Era G1 in Poland) and HTC Magic (T-Mobile myTouch 3G in the US, DoCoMo HT-03A in Japan and Vodafone Magic in the UK, Germany among some other states.), the Motorola Droid[2], and the Google Nexus One.[3]

CyanogenMod is a community-based distribution of the open-source Android operating system. It offers features not found in the official Android-based firmwares of vendors of these cell phones, including support for FLAC Lossless Audio, multi-touch, the ability to store and run downloaded applications from the microSD card, compressed cache (compcache), a large APN list, a reboot menu, support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and USB tethering, as well as other enhancements. CyanogenMod was also the first mobile OS to incorporate BFS as the task scheduler, a change that has been merged into experimental branches in the official Android source tree.[4] CyanogenMod claims to increase performance and reliability over official firmware releases.

Welcome to Internet World 2010!

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If you’re attending Internet World 2010 today (twitter hashtag #iwexpo) look out for the Salesforce-inspired guerilla marketing protest from Rackspace – “No need for inhouse servers”.

And inside Earls Court 2 you should go talk to the friendly team behind new the hosted online community from zingzam, at stand E8150. They made a big impression on me!

Drupal 7 is slower but more scalable

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Nice to hear from the BCS about Drupal 7, with more content making it slower but more safely scalable.

By all accounts it should have been delivered before now, but because of lack of contributors it’s slowed right down – I wonder if any UK-based Drupal developers are helping out in this respect?

The new release of popular content management system Drupal will be slower, but more scalable, according to its creators.

Drupal 7, which is already behind schedule, is expected to be launched in either summer or autumn this year.

The open source software, which is increasing in popularity, is now thought to power around one percent of the world’s websites.

The upgrade will feature over 70 new modules and contain a substantial growth in code size.

The announcement came at the Drupalcon conference in San Francisco.

Many UK based developers booked to attend the conference have had to watch proceedings over the net because of flight disruptions.

For the super-geek there’s the added bonus that Drupal 7 connects the open source platform into the semantic as Drupal 7 adds Resource Description Framework (RDF) to mark up content such as blog posts, comments, and tags from different sources, so you can present them in your own site or searches. Apparently it’s like turning the web into one vast database – also known as the semantic web. [Or for the complex-minded, web 2.0 + semantic web = web 3.0].

Connecting Facebook status updates and fighter pilot tactics

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Really liked the link made in the fourth programme of the BBC’s The Virual Revolution between Norbert Wiener’s feedback loop for anti-aircraft gunners in WWII (ie breaking down the division between people and systems, to allow gunner’s to hit their airborne targets) and the radical impact of the status updates within Facebook (and the likes of Twitter…) on driving the internet revolution.

So here’s my question. What would happen if you applied fighter pilot military strategist John Boyd‘s concept of “the decision cycle or OODA Loop, the process by which an entity (either an individual or an organization) reacts to an event. According to this idea, the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than one’s opponent” (see wikipedia page) to understanding of how *we* interact online?

I wonder if anyone’s applied this to produce an effective counter-cyber warfare strategy, as I can see the ‘fit’ from a theoretical point of view? [pause while *we*make a quick check..] oh yeah, see here for example as part of the University of Washington’s resource page on cyberwarfare.

More practically perhaps I wonder what would the OODA loop mean in explaining differing peoples’ actions online in the context of the BBC programme’s ‘Web Behaviour Test’ experiment?

Of course on a more practical social media level I have already blogged recently, thanks to HP Labs paper, on the value of creating good feedback loops with your top contributors:

This paper demonstrates that submitters who stop receiving attention tend to stop contributing, while prolific contributors attract an ever increasing number of followers and their attention in a feedback loop.

We demonstrate that this mechanism leads to the observed power law in the number of contributions per user and support our assertions by an analysis of hundreds of millions of contributions to top content sharing websites Digg.com and Youtube.com.

Download:  Feedback loops of attention in peer production (PDF; 0.5 mb).

Comparing US patent search engines

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I quickly put together this short animoto-video showing the beta Google Patents, US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and new Xyggy patent search engines, entry page followed by advanced search page. How do they compare in your view, focusing on US granted patents from 1976 onwards?

You should notice a difference with the Xyggy engine. Why? It runs an item search which it claims provides substantial advantages and additional information over text search.  Also, the makers say that with multiple items in the query, Xyggy discovers what they have in common to return better results.

How to radically reduce your R&D costs

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The answer to how to radically reduce your R&D costs is to involve customers in the product development cycle, using social tools as well as face to face meetings. That’s the powerful experience of ‘community chick’ Dawn Lacallade of SolarWinds, the US-based web-based network management software people at yesterday’s Telligent webinar. For your consideration I screen-grabbed the slide in question below, and should have the full set online shortly.

How using social tools to involve customers can reduce R&D costs

In summary, thanks to this intro text on the Telligent blog, SolarWinds has been able to lower costs, increase profits, and speed product enhancements by focusing on these core areas: (1) Aligning multiple departments around one community (2) Evaluating metrics that tie to company objectives (3) Monitoring growth and participation (4) Identifying influencers, contributors, and connectors.

I also liked the fact that when quizzed as to why there was a 30% involvement rate of staff in the community Dawn said this fitted their community, but it was for each business to find the balance right for them – neither swamping a community nor under-supporting it.

Full set of slides and notes, and a recording of the webinar here.

Google Docs move on apace

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Looks like 2010 really is shaping up to be the year that having your company docs online really became irrestible, thanks to Google once again with its Google Docs (‘microsoft office if it had way less features, online’) as reported in TechCrunch:

“Alrighty then. Putting that aside, you can soon upload any file type at all to Google Docs, not just the dozen or so Office formats that the service allowed as of yesterday. Video files. Images. Audio Files. Even Zip files. As long as those files are 250 MB or smaller, you’re good. The new feature will roll out over the next several weeks, says Google”.

Where does innovation come from?

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Ask yourself where does innovation come from?

Is the answer:

A. The likes of Microsoft at the CES in Las Vegas?

B. The likes of Apple who didn’t bother with Las Vegas?

C. Companies developing products for the developing world first?

D. The likes of OLPC’s Version 3?

E. All of the above?