Technology Info

A disgruntled city computer engineer has virtually commandeered San Francisco’s new multimillion-dollar computer network, altering it to deny access to top administrators even as he sits in jail on $5 million bail, authorities said Monday.

Terry Childs, a 43-year-old computer network administrator who lives in Pittsburg, has been charged with four counts of computer tampering and is scheduled to be arraigned today.

Prosecutors say Childs, who works in the Department of Technology at a base salary of just over $126,000, tampered with the city’s new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), where records such as officials’ e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail inmates’ bookings are stored.

Childs created a password that granted him exclusive access to the system, authorities said. He initially gave pass codes to police, but they didn’t work. When pressed, Childs refused to divulge the real code even when threatened with arrest, they said. (link)

Until recently, the development of mobile-friendly websites has been regarded as nothing more than an irrelevant black art. That has since changed, thanks to more web-capable phones making their way into the mainstream (such as, of course, the iPhone). But the landslide of new and improved mobile sites has opened the doors to a sort of standard-free chaos, where almost anything (that works) goes and security is a second thought. The Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) group hopes to change that, however, by launching a new initiative that focuses on mobile development without sacrificing important principles like security.

The project will be called BONDI and will be supported by a number of OMTP members: 3 Group, AT&T, T-Mobile, Telenor, Telefónica, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone. The group plans to “harmonize the various open and proprietary ongoing initiatives and this cooperative work will minimise the potential for technology fragmentation,” and will provide a secure web services interface for developers to use when creating mobile sites. “The new handset software will be engineered in such a way as to prevent fraudulent and malicious activity through unauthorized access to functions or sensitive personal information,” says OMTP. (link)

A recent collaborative study between Google, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and IBM offers new insight into how many people surfing the web are doing so safely. According to the report, a clear majority of users (some 59 percent) are using the latest version of their preferred Internet browser—but that still leaves 40.1 percent who aren’t. That’s a troublingly high number for anyone working in IT security, given that virtually all (89.4 percent) of the vulnerabilities reported in 2007 were remote exploits. Not all of these exploits specifically targeted the web browser, but it’s become the target of choice for an increasingly large percentage of all attacks. Proper browser security is therefore of paramount concern. (link)

Dell today introduced “Studio,” a new consumer product line designed for self-expression and creative living. Studio products are highly expressive and personalized - inside and out – combining aesthetics and technology into a fresh approach to hi-def mobile lifestyles.

“People seeking stunning design, brilliant colors, and innovative new technology find inspiration in Dell’s new Studio brand,” said Michael Tatelman, vice president of Dell consumer sales and marketing worldwide. “These products are built for today’s digital nomad based on the millions of conversations we have every year on dell.com, Ideastorm and community forums. With Dell Studio we’re answering the call for personalization, connectivity and simplicity.”

The first Dell Studio products are two distinctively styled laptops, the Dell Studio 15 and Dell Studio 17. These laptops combine sleek designs, striking visual color elements and personalization options with features such as standard built-in webcam, capacitive touch media control buttons, slot load drives, and optional mercury-free LED displays and built-in mobile broadband. They are available today on www.dell.com/studio starting at $799 (Studio 15) and $999 (Studio 17) and will be available at Best Buy and Staples stores in the next few days. (link)

One of the cool things about hard drive technology is how it has actually kept pace with computer needs. The basic mechanism for hard drive storage, however, does have some fundamental limitations, which manufacturers will have to deal with fairly soon. Bits are currently stored in the orientation of tiny magnets, called ferromagnetic domains, on a hard drive platter. The smaller the domain, the easier it is for that orientation to be scrambled by temperature or stray electromagnetic fields. At a certain size, thermal photons (e.g., heat energy from the surrounding case or the underlying disk) have enough energy to flip a domain’s orientation. Manufacturers will have to keep their domain sizes significantly bigger than that threshold size to ensure data integrity, which puts a ceiling on storage density, one we’re rapidly approaching.

An alternative is to use ferroelectric domains. Unlike ferromagnetic domains, ferroelectric domains have a natural electric field with an orientation that can be used to represent data. Until recently, these haven’t looked that attractive because they have pretty much the same limitations that ferromagnetic domains have, but they lack the cool read-out tricks. Ferroelectric materials, however, do have one big advantage over ferromagnetic materials: they can be used to make really good capacitors. This is exactly what the latest research, published in Nature Nanotechnology, is about. (link)

To help you stay close to those who matter most, Logitech, the world’s leading manufacturer of webcams, today unveiled its first Mac®-compatible webcam with premium autofocus technology and Carl Zeiss® optics: the Logitech® QuickCam® Vision Pro webcam for Mac. The new Logitech webcam delivers image-perfect detail and clarity, and exceptional video calling with iChat® and Skype®.

“With this new webcam for Mac computers, we’ve integrated our most advanced video technologies to truly enrich your video-calling experience,” said Gina Clark, general manager and vice president of Logitech’s Internet Communications business unit. “The lens and autofocus, the sensor and the lighting software all contribute to create image-perfect detail and clarity. Whether you’ve used a standalone or an embedded webcam in the past, you’ll be amazed at the difference in quality our new webcam makes.” (link)

Know someone who loves gadgets and can’t wait to buy the newest model? Chances are you would describe them as assertive and a strong leader — and possibly arrogant, according a U.S. research.

An online study evaluating the characteristics of 25,000 American adults found avid technology consumers tended to score highly in personality traits such as leadership, dynamism and assertiveness — but low in modesty.

“A lot of previous research points to wealthy young males as early adopters of technology,” said Sarah Welch, lead researcher at Internet ad network firm Mindset Media that conducted the study in partnership with Nielsen Online.

“But this study tells us that there are characteristics beyond age and gender and income that are also extremely highly correlated with tech consumption,” she added.

The study looked at 20 personality traits or “mindsets” including openness, creativity, self esteem and spontaneity. (link)

One in three information technology professionals abuses administrative passwords to access confidential data such as colleagues’ salary details, personal emails or board-meeting minutes, according to a survey.

U.S. information security company Cyber-Ark surveyed 300 senior IT professionals, and found that one-third admitted to secretly snooping, while 47 percent said they had accessed information that was not relevant to their role.

“All you need is access to the right passwords or privileged accounts and you’re privy to everything that’s going on within your company,” Mark Fullbrook, Cyber-Ark’s UK director, said in a statement released along with the survey results on Thursday.

“For most people, administrative passwords are a seemingly innocuous tool used by the IT department to update or amend systems. To those ‘in the know’ they are the keys to the kingdom,” he added. (link)

ioSafe has released the “3.5 series”, a range of hard drives for home and business PCs to data centre servers at a price that not only seems pretty reasonable for the protection – but also because it includes up to $2500 in additional data recovery per drive, if needed.

Designed to be used like any other hard drive, they’re being marketed as an extra insurance policy in an uncertain world, and given they’re the first of its kind, it’s pretty impressive.

ioSafe says its new drive is “engineered to protect data from fire (up to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit or 760 degrees Celsius) and flood (full immersion in fresh or salt water).”

ioSafe have managed to do this by putting a 2.5-inch hard drive into a 3.5-inch disk enclosure, making the size compatible with 3.5-inch drive bays. The space between the 3.5-inch enclosure and the 2.5-inch drive is where the ioSafe protection against fire and water technology lies, while also “resolving heat dissipation issues found in all computer systems.” (link)

Three-dimensional processors took a baby step towards commercial reality today, thanks to IBM’s water-cooling research. Big Blue and the Fraunhofer Institute have successfully tested a multistack CPU prototype that’s cooled by pumping water directly through the separate layers of the processor. If you aren’t used to thinking of processors in terms of layers, you may need to check Jon Stokes’ “Dagwood Sandwich” analogy before continuing on.

3-D chip stacking uses a technology referred to as “through silicon via” (TSV) to build processors vertically, rather than just horizontally. By using both dimensions, CPU engineers can reduce wire delay, improve CPU efficiency, and significantly reduce total power consumption. We’ve previously covered both Intel and IBM’s efforts in this area; readers should consult those articles for a more comprehensive treatment of the subject. (link)