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Looks like some of the ideas we have talked about are going mainstream. This article discusses how we will be 50 for a very long time. Only thing is that I actually want to be 20 for a very long time so these scientists better get their fingers out. Although I would guess that the age thing would quickly come down. Only problem then of course is God’s little time bomb. Our brains would still deteriorate. One hurdle we have yet to jump. One of the big downsides to having your systems in a cloud is that you have no real control over the data. Sure you can have SLAs and you can even sue, in some cases, if things do not go to plan but you are still reliant on a third party for your basic operational needs. I remember during the recession of the 90s we were looking at the impact of our suppliers going bust and how we could mitigate against that. In many cases our suppliers were actually much bigger than us and in many cases we had no viable mitigation strategy to put in place. Anything realistic was too expensive and in the end there was only a couple of products we could mitigate for and plans were put in place. For example: How could you mitigate against Microsoft going bust and taking your server and desktop OS’s and a significant number of your key products, Excel (No 1 key product in most companies), .NET applications, Sharepoint, etc. with them. You just can’t. So as we move to Cloud computing we discover we depend even more on third parties and even the biggest and the best get it wrong. So what can you do about the smaller players? Can you afford to have all your corporate data lost through a simple procedural error. Some companies would not be worth suing. The solution is to keep your data inhouse and under your control and keep copies in the cloud as backup and as working data for your cloud application. To do anything else is living in cloud cuckoo land and could soon see you with cuckoo egg on your face. It seems that one insurance company is advising its clients not to inject patients with the Swine Flu vaccine until they have sorted out the legal indemnity issues. This insurer covers over 1000 of the 2500 doctors in the UK. Now why is this? Glad you asked. I can only think that it is because the insurance company is concerned that it will be called upon to pay out for these doctors and the facts they have show that it is a significant issue. So basically they want some guarantees that the doctors cannot be sued. Sounds great for the insurance company but not so good for us. More guarantee’s from our useless government that take away one more of our safety nets. I wonder what data they have that makes them so concerned? Out driving today and came across another new set of traffic lights. As I waited patiently for them to change and let me through while no traffic whatsoever was going through them in the other direction I remembered that not that long ago it was pointed out that traffic planners had deliberately planned in traffic slowing measures contrary to what they were reporting. Reporting that they were improving traffic flow while actually causing traffic congestion to increase the tax take on fuel. What a bunch of twats. Anyway, along came the whingy whiney greens and it was pointed out that this was causing issues with the fight against climate change. Traffic planners actually deliberately increasing CO2. So bit of a Catch 22 for our wonderful government. Causing climate change to increase the tax ripoff for motorists or actually reducing climate change and at the same time reducing tax revenue. So here we are several months later and after thoroughly testing the new traffic lights I can only say that one of two things has happened. Looks like I’ll be adding traffic planners to my ‘special’ list. You see a lot of these in films where they show the power of a GUI which makes all the techies out there drool a little and wish that they would hurry up and bring a similar GUI to the public. It won’t be for everyone but I can see it being of immediate use for specific applications and, as usual, games. Of course after a while it will evolve into the standard GUI of the future. About time. I’ll have to start exercising the rest of my fingers ready for use. Yes. Any more questions? The question was being asked on this New Scientist article Remember it is not ‘smart’ at all. It is just a programmable device which has been programmed to perform certain functions. These functions usually involve aspects of your life you would rather were kept private and you only use this device for convenience. However, like all modern conveniences there is the capability that the tool can be used by someone else, with or without your permission and every bit of data you have on there can be extracted by a third party. You may not even be aware it has happened as the device can be hacked whilst still in your possession if it is not set up securely or the device has a built in backdoor. Backdoors are written in by programmers so they can access the systems when they need to. Sometimes without the software company even knowing. A hacker could even use your Smartphone for his bad deeds and the trail comes back to you. So to be safe you tidy up. You delete some files and only keep what you want. Sadly, deleting files usually does not delete the data but simply deletes the pointers. This is how normal file recovery works. But even worse, with the right equipment you can actually retrieve data that has been deleted. Plod and our security services have this capability as well as private corporations. As more and more functions are added to Smartphone’s and other such devices their use becomes almost compulsory. It also means that the uses others can put it to makes it desirable for them to do so and the trail stops with you. In addition to hackers you also have the added worry about Plod. Using these devices they can go data mining. Linking you to others and if you happened to drive down a street four weeks ago where something happened then you better have a good memory. They will take it away and you will be without your Smartphone for a long time and they take them away on suspicion of terrorism for looking at them funny nowadays. Encryption is not much help either. Plod can jail you for refusing to turn over the decryption keys. So work out if the data you are trying to hide is worth a few years. Some will be, some won’t be. Plus they may crack it themselves if they think you are worth the effort and you have not been careful with the key or the methodology. So the answer is never keep anything recorded. Remember though that it is not the Smartphone that is the problem. You can still be ‘ratted out’ by a piece of paper with information on it. But a Smartphone allows you to amass a lot of data some of which you will be unaware about. All of which you will have difficulty finding and deleting securely. Technology. A double edged sword. One game I would hate to be in is in the anti piracy arena. Sure, it would be challenging and interesting but it must have the worst job satisfaction in IT. It seems to me that you never win. You may disrupt a few things but every time someone gets caught the pirates adapt and you are back to square one. Reading this article it seems pirates have now moved back to FTP sites to host their warez. It doesn’t seem that long ago that was where they were hosted anyway. So we have come full circle and the wheel is still turning. I’ve lost touch with the warez scene. I’ll bet though that you can still get all the warez you want on DVD from your local DVD/Drug/Gun dealing/Child sex slave dealer for about a fiver. £5 for you non Brits. This scene is so similar now. You have corporates spending millions on piracy and you can still download anything you want. You have government spending trillions on stopping drugs and guns being distributed but you can still get drugs and guns wherever you want. There is one major difference though. You do not get anyone giving away drugs or guns. They are in it for the money. The DVD distributors are in it for the money as well but usually because they supply a nice shiny disk with the movie or warez. We don’t mind the few quid they charge. Their suppliers on the other hand seem to supply their warez for free. People are cracking the protection and distributing it for free as some kind of trophy. The harder the protection the more kudos they get from their peers. So how to corporates compete with that? It takes weeks to create simple protection, months to create something new. It takes crackers hours to break it. There is a competition to be the first to break a new protection scheme and it can make their name in the niche crackers world. Prohibition is a bitch for governments and corporates. Big money vs the little guy. David vs Goliath. Got to love the little guy. Well it seems that there are 10million Brits who have never used the internet. That sounds a lot to me. However, that is not acceptable. Don’t these people know that if the UK government can’t spy on these people through their computers and online activities then it has to actually use real people to make sure they are following the rules. That is so expensive. They also need everyone online so we can get rid of paper money and thus every use can be tracked and monitored for tax compliance and making sure no one, except government employees, slip through the net. It’s also unacceptable that 10 million people can’t be planted discovered with child porn on their computer if they get out of hand. How can we control these people otherwise. That is just not acceptable in this day and age. No. Sirree. It’s time to sort these plebs out and without a hint of surprise we have another useless government department to do it. Makes me want to switch off my computer. In Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home, when our time travelling heroes came back to Earth to steal a whale and save the future. Those that watched can all remember the comic scenes from that movie. One in particular was when Scotty tried to input data into the computer. First of all he said ‘Computer.’ No response. Being 1986 we didn’t have voice operated computers. An engineer indicates the mouse to Scotty who picks it up and says into it ‘Computer’. So funny…… OK, maybe you had to be there. Now here we are over 20 years later and we still use the mouse as one of the main input devices for our computers. People looking for upgrading it are still using the same basic format but with minor changes. Read here for what are described as Mouse 2.0. Look at these and see that basically there are few changes to be made and unless you like playing with new toys the old mouse will still be with us for a bit longer. In reality the mouse and its close associate the keyboard are a long way from being replaced. One of the biggest issues with computers is the IO, the Input and Output devices. It’s so we can see them and also have an easy way of getting input into them. It amazes me how many people keep Facebook or EMail on their Internet enabled mobiles and when it comes down to it they are using small keys as a mouse and their phone keys as a keyboard. Too fiddly for normal use, IMO, but it does the job when required. The mouse has been looked at for replacement for a long time. I would say we are well beyond Mouse 2.0 myself having so many different types of mouse available out there. Although at most it has been upgraded several times usually with more buttons and more movement. A good example is the MS Sidewinder which was designed for game use but I actually found easy to use for general use. It never took off mainly because the mouse is so entrenched and so much cheaper. Only die hard gamers ever really needed its extra functionality. So basically the humble Mouse 1.0 is still king with many variants of Mouse 1.1 and up being used for specialist graphics and gaming tasks. Oh well. The real breakthrough in computer IO will not be something as simple as an upgraded mouse, keyboard or video but will be some sort of neural interface. A port as you will into the mind. Preferably non invasive. It’s still a while away. In the meantime though we will have a stop gap of glasses, headphones, microphone and gloves fitted with the same technology we have in the Wii controllers. With computers being small enough to fit in a couple of cubic inches with SS memory and WiFi we can fit it all in a helmet and interact in a more natural way for games and educational uses. I can’t wait to see what this will do for education once you can interact with everything. It will bring Science, History, etc. alive. A true breakthrough in education although I have no doubt Games will be the driver. For people like myself of course I’ll still have my mouse and keyboard as well as my neural interface and I have no doubt that the keyboard and mouse will be available for a long time to come. |
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Programming false memorys
As we have touched on before there is, currently, only two types of processors available to us.
1) Biological brains
2) Artificial brains, currently silicon based. (Computers)
Now I don’t believe we should be using biological brains for anything at all. They may be better in many respects to computers but they have many weaknesses. Evolution has given them the capability of not just processing but learning and adaptation. It is not unknown for pathways in the brain to adjust and adapt to injury thus restoring capability lost. In addition as we have touched on before programming is problematic with brains interpreting events differently and therefore results may differ between two seemingly identically programmed units.
As you are aware from previous posts I’m of the opinion that we should keep away from this area, certainly with higher brain power intended for AI work, but in my view all areas.
If however you were going down that path and working on brain tissue it seems we may have a way to actually programme each brain in exactly the same way. Like a DVD is written to by lasers we have biological brains also being written to by lasers.
It’s the start in what could be a step towards providing education and allowing us to ‘live’ events from the past for starters. It could also be used for simple biological processing units with simple programming and functionality. All positive things.
So why was it that my first thought was governments reprogramming murderers and violent criminals including kiddie fiddlers? After all who can object to this humane treatment rather than executing them or cutting bits off? OK with that then. After a while it becomes acceptable and we move on to programming dissidents for objecting against the EU then on to dumbing down people who object to the way this planet seems to be taking massive steps backward. Making sure everyone is indoctrinated with the true gospel of global warming. All hail Al Gore.
This one frightens me. I’m hoping this one doesn’t go too well.