 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Produced and hosted by Jon Gordon, Future Tense brings you the latest technology topics in daily five-minute capsules. From electronic privacy and digital democracy to spam and computer worms, Future Tense keeps you up to date on the rapidly changing world of technology.
Future Tense is heard in the United States during broadcasts of the CBC's As It Happens.
Follow Jon Gordon's daily technology blog.
Sponsors
The online Encyclopedia of Life is project to create a Web page for all 1.8 million known species on the planet. Project leaders expect it will be ten years before all species get their due, but you can see the early results online now. The first 30,000 pages of the free encyclopedia debuted this week.
Computer and social scientists at the University of Maryland have developed a new tool that uses artificial intelligence and social networking to detect potential terrorist activity. The SOMA Terror Organization Portal uses computers to analyze massive amounts of data on known terrorist groups, then forecasts potential terrorist activity by those groups. The system also allows analysts from different agencies to communicate with each other to discuss possible threats identified by the smart computers.
Ever since Apple started making computers with chips from Intel, consumers have not had to choose between Mac OS X and Windows. Apple computers can run both.
Running Windows on your Mac is the new book from longtime Future Tense contributor Dwight Silverman. The book explains why you might want to run more than one operating system, and how to doit. It also includes sections that explain Macs to Windows users, and vice versa.
Now that Blu-ray has defeated HD-DVD in the battle for next-generation DVD supremacy, will consumers adopt the high-definition movie format in droves? Not until next year at least, according to analyst Paul Erickson with research firm DisplaySearch.
Researchers at Princeton University say all it takes to break the encryption that protects data on a computer hard drive is to freeze the machine's memory chip with a blast from a can of compressed air used for dusting. Researchers say freezing a dynamic random access memory chip causes it to retain data for minutes or even hours after the machine loses power. Those chips temporarily hold data, including the keys to the algorithms that scramble data.
A new report from Forrester Research says sales of digital music downloads will overtake CD sales in four years. We're seeing the end of the music industry as we know it, according to Forrester analyst James McQuivey.
One possible consequence of Fidel Castro's resignation from the presidency is a more open Internet in Cuba.
The last few years have already brought change. Internet access is expanding, especially at Cuban universities. And a small but growing group of Cuban bloggers have managed to evade government controls to find an audience, especially outside the country.
Since Cuba got connected to the Internet in 1996, access has been granted mostly to the elite. Those who do have access connect at work, not home. And Internet users are concentrated in Havana.
Internet connections in Cuba are slow, according to Cristina Venegas, University of Calfiornia Santa Barbara professor of film and media studies. Venegas, who's writing a book about the changing Internet and media landscape in Cuba, says one reason for the Internet's arrested development is the U.S. embargo.
Today we feature part two of our interview with Jon Swartz, co-author of Zero Day Threat: How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity.
A more determined, professional criminal underground, combined with the systematic failure of financial companies, software makers, law enforcement and lawmakers to work together to plug security holes, adds up to a major and growing threat to consumers identities and money. That's one of the central themes of the upcoming book Zero Day Threat: How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity by USA Today technology reporters Jon Swartz and Byron Acohido.
Next month Microsoft will release its first major update to Windows Vista, Microsoft's troubled operating system that debuted in January 2007. Service Pack 1 will be delivered to users automatically. The free update is designed to fix numerous problems and boost the speed of some functions.
Service Pack 1 is 65 megabytes worth of software code, but Windows expert Ed Bott says its effect might be mostly psychological.
Social networking service Facebook says it's making it easier for users to delete their accounts. Until now users could deactivate their accounts, meaning that Facebook would keep customer profiles in their system, but many users found it difficult or impossible to delete their accounts entirely. That prompted a critical piece in the New York Times earlier this week. Now Facebook is making it possible to request account deletion via e-mail.
Vanderbilt University law professor Steven Hetcher says the practice of retaining user-generated content, even when customers want out, has not been exclusive to Facebook. He says YouTube, according to its terms of service, reserves the right to retain user-submitted video clips on its system after users delete them. And he points to a dispute over property rights in the Second Life game, in which a user successfully sued the game maker for improperly confiscating his virtual land.
Hetcher says some Internet companies are abusing consumers' rights, using hard-to-understand terms of service agreements as their weapons. He says those agreements, which customers must accede to before they can create accounts, often hide the truth about data retention practices behind tricky language.
As part of a plan to reinvigorate its brand, Starbucks will offer free wireless Internet access at more than 7,000 stores. This spring, customers who use Starbucks cards can get up to two hours per day of free Wi-Fi, while customers of AT&T Broadband and U-Verse services will have unlimited access in Starbucks stores. Others can purchase two hour increments for $3.99 - much cheaper than the existing T-Mobile service.
Future Tense commentator Dwight Silverman says this expansion of free Wi-Fi is good news for mobile workers, but bad news for independent coffee shops.
Buying a next-generation DVD player is a safer bet for consumers today, after both Netflix and Best Buy endorsed Blu-ray over competing format HD-DVD. Many consumers have stayed on the sideline in fear they'd choose the wrong format as the electronics industry engaged in a bit of civil war, VHS versus Betamax style.
Guest: Natali Del Conte of CNET TV
Internet security company McAfee says interactive web applications, like Google Mail or Facebook, will be among the biggest threats to computer security over the next year. McAfee notes that cybercriminals have already targeted sites such as Salesforce, Monster and Linked In to harvest personal and financial information users enter on those sites.
Robert Hansen, CEO of security company SecTheory, says the biggest threat to web applications is a kind of phishing.
(Hansen will address the Twin Cities chapter of OWASP tonight in Minneapolis)
As Microsoft pursues its takeover of Yahoo to find the missing piece in its Internet advertising puzzle, there are growing signs that advertising revenues have been slow to develop on some of the most popular corners of the Internet: social networking sites such as Facebook and video sharing sites such as YouTube.
Guest: Kevin Delaney, technology reporter for the Wall Street Journal
When four submarine cables that carry the Internet to Egypt, Oman, Dubai, Iran, India and other nearby countries failed in the span of just a few days, conspiracy theories began taking hold on the Web. Was it an act of terrorism by Al Qaeda? Was the U.S. or Israel trying to disrupt communications to countries with large Muslim populations, perhaps in preparation for war?
Eric Schoonover of TeleGeography Research says there's no reason to expect a conspiracy.
When computer security makes the news, the stories often concern threats from the outside: a destructive virus in the wild, for example, or a gang of thieving hackers bent on breaking into computer networks to steal money.
Less attention is paid to threats from inside of organizations.
The recent scandal at the French bank Societe Generale is one example of an inside threat: The French finance minister says controls at the bank missed or ignored suspicious activity by a trader whose dealings led to about $7 billion in losses. The trader is said to have overstepped his authority, evaded computer controls and bet more than the bank's worth on futures in European equity markets.
Guest: Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, senior information scientist at the Rand Corporation
The country's technology center of Silicon Valley seems to be coalescing around Barack Obama for president in the Democratic primary, and John McCain in the Republican contest. Maverick Republican Ron Paul, who appeals to the tech sector's libertarian leanings, has also gotten strong support.
German scientists have developed a computer system to reconstruct millions of files on citizens and informants torn up by the Stasi -- the East German secret police.
After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Stasi tore up into jigsaw puzzle-size pieces documents from their huge operation. Those documents include meticulous observations on East Germans and foreigners deemed a threat to the state. About 15 people have been working at the Berlin archive for Stasi documents meticulously piecing together scraps by hand. But that process has only produced an average of 10 documents a day, and at that rate could take 400 years to get though 16,000 sacks of files.
A consortium of scientists says the process can be greatly speeded up and will take just five years with their new computer scanning system.
Guest: Berlin-based freelance writer Andrew Curry
