Tech news
June 2005
40
million credit card accounts exposed to possible theft after
it was announced that a payment processing agency had a breach in their security.
The extend of this form of theft has reached colossus level. The Federal Trade
Commission estimates that roughly 10 million Americans have their personal
information pilfered and misused in some way or another every year, costing
consumers $5 billion and businesses $48 billion annually.
Apple
Macintosh PCs to be powered by the same engine as Windows-based PCs announced
Steve Jobs, founder and CEO. Macintosh had until now relied on IBM's microprocessors.
Watch out for Macintosh with multiple booting options - Macintosh's O.S., Windows
and Linux .
May 2005
Flash
memory drive to replace conventional hard drive (HDD)
is gaining repid ascendary with the announcement by Samsung of their 16GB
solid-state disk (SSD). Samsung is the world's biggest producer of flash
memory chips which have the advantage of lower power consumption and quicker
data access over HDD. Initial take-ups of SSD will be by digital video and
still camera manufacturers, notebook PCs, gaming machines and PDAs.
Compatibility
of new mega-gigabyte DVD formats now in doubt as
the groupings representing the two major standards could not agree on a universal
standard reminiscing the duel between VHS and Betamax in the 70s for the video
tape standard.
Microsoft's
next generation gaming machine Xbox 360 will
feature wireless game controller and for the first time will include multimedia
capabilities not unlike Apple iPod. Price? Close to iPod's. Not to be outdone,
rival Sony announced the replacement to PS2, PS3. With the new releases gamers
can now enjoy movie-like graphics and sound.
April 2005
Another
Marriage in Software Kingdom Adobe,
makers of Acrobat Reader (pdf files format) and leading photo editor, Adobe
Photoshop, will merge with leading Web designer software maker, Macromedia
(Dreamweaver/Flash) to consolidate their grip in this solid market of graphics
and webdesigning against the ever threatening inroads by software superheavyweight,
Microsoft. Remember what MS Excel did to Lotus123 and MS Server to Novell Network
OS?
We
have only just begun, according
to Bill Gates,
Microsoft founder and the world's weathiest individual. As processing power,
network bandwidth, storage capacity, and advanced software continue to evolve
at rates that meet or beat Moore's Law, there will be even more opportunities
to empower workers and transform their productivity. In fact, I believe that
computing will change our lives more in the next 10 years than it has in the
past quarter-century -- and that the PC, in all its forms, will be the centerpiece
of this new wave of innovation.
Battery
that recharges in an instance was
announced by Toshiba for target release next year. Potential application include
hybrid vehicles and laptops.
March 2005
Dungeons &
Dragons Players Need Nor Apply says
the Israeli defence force because enthusiasts of the game are detached from
reality and susceptible to influence. "These people have a tendency
to be influenced by external factors which could cloud their judgment. They
may be detached from reality or have a weak personality, elements which lower
a person's security clearance, allowing them to serve in the army, but not
in sensitive positions.
Show &
Tell, Using Computer Games to Share the Good News,
in fact, the M-rated Halo2 game with high intensified violence. A church
in Denver had a novel way of attracting non-churched gamers to church by
inviting the public to play games with one another.
Doom
3, Grand Theft Auto, Half Life & Halo named
most violent games (in that order) children and teens should avoid according
to The National Institute on Media and the Family.  ( more )
Australia
slips out of Top Ten in IT Super League in
the World Economic Forum's 2004-2005 Global Information Technology Report.
Singapore, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and the United States made up the top
five performing economies (more).
Swiss
knife for today's hi-tech geek - the ultimate 'kia-su' (never caught short)
device. Battery powered MP3 player next? (more)
February 2005
Australian
IT providing solutions to soften disasters like tsunami and earthquake. "It's
like project management software, but scales to hundreds of people working
on many projects," claims the CEO from Thoughtweb. ( more )
Faster
memory chips to boost processing speed,
in fact, 4 times faster than the memory chips used
in today's PCs were announced by Samsung Electronics.
After the CPU (Intel or AMD), memory chips play
the most significant role in processing speed.
Moore's Law of doubling speed every 18-24 months
still hold sway. ( more )
read
also: Intel
announced
update
to
its
Pentium4
CPU
that
had
reached
its
practical
limit.
Superfast
Broadband Just Round The Corner with
the arrival of 8Mbps offering from Perth's iinet on their private cabling
network ( more ).
With ratification of the ADSL new standards the speed will progress
to 24Mbps on the same line. Even
this too will be slow compared to the trial of transmitting internet
signals via the power lines, a whopping 75Mbps ( more ).
SPAM
law almost ineffective in stopping spam growth. Since
the Can
Spam Act went into effect in January 2004 in USA, unsolicited junk
e-mail on the Internet has come to total perhaps 80 percent or more
of all e-mail sent, according to most measures. That is up from 50
percent to 60 percent of all e-mail before the law went into effect. ( more )
January 2005
Digital Crime? You have seen nothing yet warns
consultants Deloitte
Touche Tohmatsu. With increased mobility and accessibility as a result of the
wireless revolution criminals are beginning to take advantage of the security
gaps provided by the technology. ( more )
Phishers, bogus sites with the objective of collecting sensitive
information, shows no sign of slowing. ( more )
Two-thirds of IT Managers rated spyware to be No.1 threat. ( more )
|
