Jon lu's blog

2005-12-12T03:17:00.000-08:00

Digital Nugget # 9

Google: New big brother?

With the modern citizen concerned about big brother ie. Government looking over their shoulder and the collection of their data seems to not really care until it's to late other institution on what information is collected. Google recently announce that it will start putting online their new public domain digital library. What people don't know is that they also intend to create a online phone book of cell phone numbers. How are they getting these numbers? From their free gmail service. Also from that service they are going to keep all the emails that you sent and receive on their servers. Also on these servers, Google will save every search that people have made using their search engine. Just imaging the potential damage people can do if they ever get their hands on this information.

2005-11-23T18:50:00.000-08:00

Digital Milestone #10

It's quite amazing too see technology advancing and how main stream society throughout the world has adapted it to their own. Podcasting didn't exsist 2 years ago and yet now major news organizations are podcasting every night. Blogs were just for the computer or technology nerd. But after the blog proven to be useful and spread, major organizations from networks to major Fortune 500 companies are blogging.

These new technology systems are not the only things that are becoming main stream. The gaming industry has been a very profitable business. It has come to the point that the video gamers have become their own subculture with the games of Everquest, Star Wars:Galaxies, and others. It got so bad that people commit suicide if their character dies with these digital worlds. (Note: People committing suicide because of Everquest or other online games has not been proven.)

Complementing these digital subcultures there are gaming tournaments. In fact recently there were two gaming tournament that just concluded where the prize money combined totaled $750000. It would be surprising if these events are televised internationally like the Olympics. They are already being televised nationally with the host country. Here are some organizations that organize these events.

Cyberathlete Professional league

I would be quite interesting to see how the computer and its software continue to dominate our lives. Will the technology continue to help the lives of human or will it take control of our lives?

2005-11-16T22:22:00.000-08:00

Digital Nugget #8

The US government has traditionally avoided regulating the market place until some sort of social or economic disaster has taken place. For years the US Congress has avoided regulating stock market. That’s until 1929, when the stock market crash sending millions of Americans into poverty.

This is a similar situation now with data protection. Data brokerage companies have been collecting data from the average citizen from personal to financial data. The US Congress has been content of letting these companies regulate themselves. Until recently only the state of California required notification if their data was compromised, however with the recent security breaches at major firms such as ChoicePoint Inc, LexsisNexis, and others Congress has finally decided to act.

With the certainty of passage from the House of Representatives and resistances from the industry, H.R. 3997, the Financial Data Protection Act, will require the firms to be held accountable for future security breaches and notify people if their data has been compromised.

2005-11-13T17:53:00.000-08:00

digital Nugget #7

There was a report on the CBS news website about a new electronic payment system. This system is being tested in the Chicago area Cub Food stores. They market this service as a convenience and more efficient way to pay.

The system requires a voided check, your name, your drivers license, and your fingerprint. This can be done with a special booth that they set up. After the patron finished inputting their information, then all they have to do is give their fingerprint to the machine and it will deduct the appropriate amount from your checking accounts.

This brings up several issues on privacy, convenience, security, and technology. How will this information be used? How will this information be protected? Who is ultimately responsible for the integrity of this information. Can the patrons track and change their own information? Will the patrons be notified if their information is compromised? Will this technology catch on?

What do you think?

2005-11-11T15:04:00.000-08:00

Digital Milestone #9

It's always amazing in hearing about how the Internet came about. We take for granted the modern Internet provides. Example: e-mail, electronic databases, and World Wide Web. Like many recent pushes in technology many of them are either military or government funded. Without these entities, technology would become stagnant.

Recent technologies that benefited from the military or the government is synthetic rubber. When World War 2 started to effect America, they discovered that their natural supply was cut off. So the US government has poured millions of dollars into researching an alternatives.

Same thing with nuclear "things". Without the Federal Government, we would have a new source of energy or new treatments for disease. Then again we also have nuclear weapons.

During the life of computers and the Internet, the government has always been closely linked to it's development. The first major computer bought for commercial or governmental usage was a computer designed by Herman Hollerith. The company that he found and sold this equipment eventually became part of IBM. The reason why this computer was created because the US Census department need a more efficient way in processing census forms. This was for the 1890 census.

Let's fast forward to about 30 years ago. The government wanted some type of computer network that would theoretically keep running after a nuclear attack. So with cooperation of several research institutes, the Department of Defense created ARPANET. Despite what Al Gore may have stated, the Internet was a collaborative effort amount many people. Without government interest and investment, the Internet that we know today wouldn't come about.

That is why the government is continuing to do research to improve the efficiency of the government, protecting it's citizens, and the betterment of science and technology.

2005-11-07T11:03:00.000-08:00

Digital Nugget #6

This came up in Dr. Carbo's class on Information Policy. As we all know, satellite phones are available on the web. In fact Elizabeth Mahoney during her reference class, showed us a service where she pulled up a satellite photo of the school. There's currently a provision in posting these pictures that there will be no pictures posted that will threat the national security of any country. However what happens if the are was within a natural disaster zone. The zone could be literally anywhere. Satellite photos were used during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. However during the earthquake operations of Pakistan the government won't let people use the photos due to national security reasons. Granted that the area includes the disputed area of Kashmir, but shouldn't there be a way that nature disasters trumps national security?

http://www.spaceimaging.com/

http://terraserver.microsoft.com/default.aspx

2005-11-04T19:07:00.000-08:00

Digital Nugget #5

With technology, it can be used for good or evil purposes. I read in a Star Trek novel that "Technology is neutral. It was we do with it that makes it good or evil." Computers today store a lot of useful data and make record keeping a breeze. However a computer can be used to attack other computers and reek havok in society.

The FBI has recently arrest a 20 year old who is a member of the "Botmaster Underground". A bot is a program that once it's installed on the computer, the hacker can them come in and take over the computer. The bot can do serious damage to a comouter network or send huge quantity of spam. What make this individual unique is that he sold his services and his bots.

He made about $60,000 and has effect thousands of computers including the US Naval Air Warfare Center and the Department of Defense. If convicted on all 17 counts, he could be in prison for 50 years.

Here are some links about bots in general.

2005-11-03T21:07:00.000-08:00

Digital Nugget #4

I found this story quite interesting. A person downloads a trojan into a victim's computer. This trojan then encrypts and deny access to the victim's files unless the victim pays the person $200 for the encryption key. Here is the article. http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/05/25/
ransomware/index.html .

People are just making malicious software either just for kicks, the thrill, or money. It make you wonder if the programmer actually have ethics. At Georgia Tech one of the required caused in the computer science program is an ethics course.

2005-11-03T20:11:00.000-08:00

Digital Nugget #3

The FBI has recently admitted that they have used roving wiretaping illegally. They said that they tape phones of the wrong people or continue to monitor the "suspects" long after the warrent expired. This wire tapping included everything from phones to e-mails. The FBI is currently blaming clerical errors and "forgetful" agents. There is currently an investigation on what has happened. This incident has raise quite a few questions such as:

Does the USAPATRIOT Act goes to far in eroding civil liberties?
Will there be some type of oversite or accountability to prevent this type of occurance from happening again?

2005-11-03T20:10:00.000-08:00

Digital Nugget #2

You see blogs everywhere. Now evangelical Christians are taking advantage of the technology. They say that mainstream media and traditional modes of communication have restricted the discussion of religious to a couple of hot issues such as abortion and gay marriage. They see blogging as a break out of the traditional topic areas. In fact there was a workshop on how to write a religious blog that didn’t alienate others. You can see a religious blog on smartchristian.com.

2005-11-03T20:04:00.000-08:00

Digital Nugget #1

Technology has really advanced in America. Now we have a device called a Blackberry which can send and receive e-mails from the palm of your hand. However with every technological advancement, there’s an inevitable medical condition that crops out of it. The Blackberry is no exception. This malady is informally called “Blackberry Thumb”. This malady comes from an injury caused by repetitive stress injury to the thumb because of the small keyboard. Even though there is no national statistics, doctors have notice an up swing in cases. The American Society of Hand Therapists warned consumers that extended use of small electronic devised might lead to painful swelling of the tendons in the thumb. It’s recommended that the user takes breaks every 10 to 15 minutes for every hour of use.

2005-11-02T14:01:00.000-08:00

Digital Milestone # 8

Logic is a very funny thing. Human claim that they think logically. We could write theorems, theories and scientific experiment that would melt an average human mind. However sometimes our logic doesn't translate well in the computer world. The computer only understand literal and linear logic. Human on the other hand do something the I term as fuzzy logic. This happens in many psychology experiments where the human mind can't simply be broken down logically. The human mind and their way of thinking will continue to be one of life's greatest mysteries. That is why only certain sectors of the human population can code effectively because they have a knack in think like a computer. They can get all the detail that is necessary to talk to the computer. Many people can get the concepts required to code or talk to the computer, but it takes a special person to make what they want to happen and make it happen within a computer.

2005-10-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

Digital Milestone #7

The language of a computer is always amazing. They only communicate in zeroes and ones. However a human wouldn't understand a computer unless they spend hours in deciphering the digits. So to solve this problem people started to create a "computer language" that humans could write and decipher easily. They started out with assembly language which is a step up from zeroes and ones; however it wasn't very friendly to anyone but the computer. To aid in computer language design people developed cobol, FORTRAN, and Pascal. These languages became the dominant computer languages during the 60's and 70's. Even with these advancements compliers still translated these "advance" computer languages to the basic language of a computer, zeros and ones.

Today computer programmers are striving to create a more human computer language. Meaning that all you have to do is tell the computer what to do and the computer would be able to figure out the inputted instructions. As of now we have computer languages as JAVA, C++, and SQL. However these languages still get translated into zeros and ones. I feel that computer languages will continue to evolve into a more humanistic language or that the basic computer language will imitate the human language some how. What is the future of computer languages? Will a language be taught at a school as a foreign language or will is being as prevalent as the English language?

2005-10-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

Digital Milestone #6

It's amazing how computer technology has advanced. It was almost 50 years ago when the ENIAC was built. It took up a whole floor of a building. Now the computers are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Computers today are getting more powerful. In fact a processor is out of date within 3 month. This is not surprising since chip companies have a new chip design in the pipeline every 6 month. This is not only to computers, this is also towards memory storage. Less then a decade ago, the most you could save on a disk was about 1.3 Mb. Today was have flash drives that could save a gig of memory. Let's not forget cd/dvd burners.

It's quite ironic that many of the great invention of electronics are American in origin but it took other countries to make it a commercial success. Transistors being a perfect example. Transistors today is a key component within a computer. It's the primary reason why computers are so small and affordable. Even though the transistor was an American invention, American industries weren't very open to the idea to convert to this new technology. However a Japanese company called Sony after some resistance from the government began producing their famed transistor radios. It makes you wonder what other American inventions that other countries took advantage off commercially that the US didn't.

2005-10-22T12:03:00.000-07:00

Digital Milestone #5

Chat and Instant Messaging (IM) software has revolutionized on how we communicated on the Internet. This is an efficient way in communicating on the computer without knocking out the phone line. People uses these technologies now in everyday life to communicate with family and friend where normally they wouldn't.

However with every new advancement there is always drawbacks. If you have multiple people who are trying to discuss an issue using chat then the one with the fastest typing hands usually dominates the chat since this is a very fast system that if you don't keep up you'll get left behind. This is similar to IM. Also there might be some time involved in trying to type out your answer and the person might interpret this as you're no longer interested in the conversation. Chat and IM is still relatively young and the older generation is still not use to using it.

Chat and IM are currently being used in reference services at libraries, and alternative to video or conference calls. However the organizations that do deploy this software need to regulate it for it can be very easily abused. So as technologies improve, there will always be drawbacks. I think the ultimate what to do long range communications is what they do with Star Trek and their long range visual subspace communication system.

http://www.aim.com/

2005-10-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

Digital Milestone #4

Debugging is a programmers worst nightmare. Especially for the amateur programmer or college students forced to take the first basic class in computer science. With programming, you have to be logical and precise. If one character is off, then your program will crash or worst create an international incident with an unintended worm or virus.

This reminds me of a story that happenbed to me once. In an electrical enginering class we had to program a buble sort useing assembly computer language. Assembly is one of the first computer language that was in existance but not popular to the public at large. The problem was that the program would run if you hard code the sequence that you were to sort. However I just could get the sort to work if you were to enter the sequence by hand. The problem was that I had placed an extra $. Just one character out of place prevented me from getting the program right.

HTML is even worst since this code can be seen on several different web browsers. These browers would each react differently to the HTML code. In this one assignment we had to make a sentence blink. It wouldn't blink on Explorer but it would work on Netscape. The solution was that the line of code that made the line blink had to be moved before another line of code to make it work on both major browers. This is another complication working in HTML, Flash, or any web based computer language.

The precision that's required in programming is very similar to cataloging in the library world. In LIS 2001 (Organizing Information), the teacher would grade the papers "harshly" since many student's there it was their first cataloging class. And unlike computer programming you wouldn't have any idea that would were wrong until you get that marked up paper in your hand.

Debugging is a neccessary evil that all must endure to be successful in this technological world.

2005-09-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

Digital Milestone #3

The Internet contain information that would boggle the human mind. People had said that the Internet would be a great source of information replacing libraries and their staff. However, it makes you wonder sometime on what information are you getting from the net. With freely available software and hosting sites, people can post anything that that they want. It's sometimes very difficult to discern what is real and what is a hoax. Some people take advantage of Internet users such as those site scamming money for hurricane Katharina and Rita. People need to be wary about internet resources. Also people in general need the skills to evaluate these sites properly. For this fact librarians aren't going away anytime soon, they just need to adjust their skill set to the electronic media. Here are some examples that a professor showed us on internet hoaxes. This class was on how to evaluate internet resources.

Â DreamTech
Â The Onion
Â Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Inst.
Â www.stanford.edu/group/King/
Â http://www.martinlutherking.org/
Â http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoaxsites.html

2005-09-25T13:47:00.000-07:00

Encryption is not only used by top corperations or government agencies, ordinary people have been using encrytion software in their everyday lives. I myself use that is publicly avaiable. The encyption software that everyone is using is contained within their internet browers. I think it's a 128 bit encyption. This is good enough for the general public. The current controversy about this encryption software is that law enforcement was to have a key that could unlock the encryption. This gets into the debate about the power of police and the right to privacy.

2005-09-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

Digital Milestone 2

It's interesting on how viruses or other "bad" software got into the cyber world. I don't think anyone knows when the first virus was set loose, but the textbook gave a very early example on how one was launched. Even though the sentence that the guy received may seemed lenient today. However we need to remember that back in 1988, the internet was only getting started and these type of crimes were only coming to light. Today if the person is caught letting go of a virus/worm, then they are almost guaranteed a jail sentence and a stiff fine.

Here are some insidences that virus and worms has come into play.

Here is some tips on how to protect yourself from virus and worms asides from the typical anti-virus program.

- Install security patches and keep security software updated;
- Do not click on unexpected e-mail attachments;
- Secure your wireless networks at home by turning on encryption features;
- Be cautious when using any peer-to-peer products, like file-sharing networks;
- Educate family members on how to use the Internet safely;
- Be aware of taking a potentially infected laptop between home and work.

Howard Schmidt, former White House cyber security advisor, and president and CEO of R&H Security Consulting.

This makes you wonder how did these terms come about? The trojan is a pretty obvious choice, however how did the term virus and worms become part of the computer science lexon. I have no clue. I do know how the term "bug" came about.

According to legend the term bug came about during the early day of computing during the 1950's. A navy team headed by then Lt. Grace Hopper was doing some computer work when the machine that they were working on stopped working. Back in the day, these computers were very large and they did computations in a more physical manner than they did today. What they found was a moth had gotten squished inside the computers. Which was a little strange since they were in a "secure" location. With the computer working again, they noted in the log book that they found a "bug" in the system and corrected the anomaly. They even taped the moth beside the entry. And this folks is how the term bug came to be a part of the computer's lexicon.

So drop me a line if you know any stories on how computers terms came to be.

2005-09-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

Digital milestone one

After reading on the section about encryption got me thinking about the encryption methods of the past. In the past the encryption was simply to replace the letters with a sequence or numbers and later with numbers and letters. These encryptions were relatively simple to decipher. In WWII the allies still used human code breakers with the aid of primitive computers to breaker the Nazis and Japanese military and diplomatic codes. http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/.

However with the advent of computers many encryption techniques are now done almost exclusively on computer. Even though humans still play a significant part in breaking the code, the computer does most of the work. With an example in the book, I was surprised that it took computer scientist about a decade in cracking one of the possible encryption codes available to the public. I feel better in knowing that my data is safe for the most part if the data is encrypted. With all the electronic thefts that have been happening, it's amazing that not all data on computer networks are encrypted.

Here are some interesting news reports on hackers and encryption breaking.

It should be noted that the more encryption that happens, the slower the computer system gets. The reason being that the computer has to decode everything that it receives and codes everything that it sent out.

2005-09-07T18:42:00.000-07:00

Hey, this is the first blog posting. Hope this will be used quite often for class.