Notes from the Electronic Cottage 7/23/09

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

When you buy a book in print form, you own the book and can do what you want with it – you’re in control of that purchase. When you buy a book in electronic form, you own it and can do what you want with it and are in control of that purchase – not! A look at the Amazon Kindle or at new automotive technologies reminds us that control in the physical world and control in the electronic realm can be two very different things.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 7/09/09

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Two conferences coming up might not make the front pages of the daily paper but they are of great interests to those of us who live part of our lives in cyberspace. Black hat and DefCon take place at the end of July/beginning of August in Las Vegas. Both conferences highlight security vulnerabilities in the electronic world, and it seems that every year some company tries to keep a presenter from speaking because the company’s product has a security problem the company doesn’t want the world top know about. This year is no different.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 7/02/09

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

As more news trickles out of Iran, we learn more about the technologies Iranians were using to get around the chokes that the Iranian government was putting on communication channels. Iranians used both economization software like TOR (www.torproject.org), and encryption software, like GNU Privacy Guard (www.gnupg.org), to get access to information and communicate without getting arrested. These are technologies we might be interested in understanding and holding in reserve in case we ever want to use them.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 6/25/09

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Technology has played an important role in the protests about the recent election in Iran – both for good and for ill. The Internet allowed protesters to communicate after the Iranian government effectively took control of the mass media. Deep packet inspection technology also allowed the Iranian government to monitor protesters emails and help identify those who were communicating via the Internet and what they were saying. The monitoring technology was supplied by western companies – who also supplied the same technologies to western governments, including the U.S., who are using it in much the same way the Iranian government is. Interestingly, the language we use to describe that activity is quite different depending on who is doing the monitoring.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 6/18/09

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell
The TopCoder Open is a big deal international computing competition. It was won this year by an 18 year old Chinese lad. Out fo 4200 entrants, there were 70 finalists: 20 were from China, 10 from Russia, 2 from the U.S. About the same time, the Carnegie Corporation of New York issued report entitled “The Opportunity Equation: Transforming Mathematics and Science Education for Citizenship and the Global Economy.” These two events might serve to give pause to those who may think the United States will automatically be the leader in technology in the future.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 6/11/09

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

When you hear that a particular radio station is “Number 1 in listeners”
just what that claim is based upon? The answer is Arbitron ratings, and had been for years. But there are some real problems with the way Arbitron has determined listenership in the past and so the company has rolled out a new mechanized device called the Portable People Meter. Alas, the way this new technology has been deployed seems to have problems of its own…

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 6/04/09

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

First a little trivia: at five minutes and six second after 4 a.m. On July 8, 2009, the time will be (in the U.S. convention for representing time)
04:05:06 07/08/09. This will never happen again in our lifetimes.

Meanwhile, if you are thinking of taking a trip to the UK, it might be wise to be really careful not to get arrested, even for picking flowers, lest your DNA wind up in the world’s biggest DNA database and stay there practically forever.

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