When it comes to hard-drive MP3 players, there’s the Apple iPod — with 5.7 million of them in consumers’ hands as of September — and then, trailing badly, there are the rest. The iPod has about 90.9 per cent of the hard-drive MP3 player market in the United States, Rio has 2.8 per cent, Creative has 2.6 per cent and iRiver has 1.5 per cent. Here’s a guide to the most popular hard-drive based models, which are bound to be among the most-wanted items this Christmas:
   Apple iPod
Price: In its various forms including the 20 and 40 gigabyte models ($429 and $559, respectively); the highly popular four gigabyte Mini ($349); the 20-gigabyte U2 special edition ($499) and the latest in the line, the 40-gigabyte Photo model ($679).
These are all designed to work with Apple’s iTunes program that runs on both Windows PCs and on Macs and it’s likely that, — other than the eye candy of its superb design — much of the appeal of the iPod is a result of how easy it is to move music from the computer to the iPod and from there to those sometimes painful little earbuds you see so many people sporting these days. Another attraction soon to be discovered by Canadians is the integration of iTunes, and therefore the iPod, with Apple’s hugely popular iTunes music store. Oh, and the iPod is the only player that can handle Apple’s proprietary AAC format, which gives you better quality sound than MP3s.
   Rio Carbon
Price: 5 gigabyte drive, $350
Designed to compete with the four-gigabyte iPod Mini, the Carbon can pack an extra 200 songs on its hard drive for the same price as you would pay for the Mini. And it weighs a tad less and is slightly smaller — always a consideration for those toting their music from place to place. As well, the Carbon has a battery that lasts 20 hours (the Mini’s is about eight hours) and is compatible with Windows media and the secure WMA music format downloads that you find on some services. The backlit 1.25-inch display provides readable information and, oh yes, you can use a built-in microphone to record voice memos, if that’s something you need.
   Creative Zen Touch
Price: 20 gigabytes, $500
Aimed at the basic iPod model, the Zen Touch is priced higher than the equivalent Apple offering, which starts it at a disadvantage in a market as tough as this one, especially when for another $49 you can get a 40 gigabyte iPod. However, it does have a touch sensitive scroll pad (hence the name, naturally) that allows for easy navigation (it also has alphabetical find feature that allows for quick searching for songs and artists) and it will handle not just MP3 files, but also WMA and WAV files. You can use the bundled MediaSource software for organizing your music, burning tracks and transferring tunes to the Touch or you can use the Windows Media Player to do the same thing.
   RCA Lyra 2854
Price: 40 gigabyte drive, $500
Here’s another competitor with the basic iPod, although again priced slightly higher in Canada. The Lyra has good sound and will play MP3, and Windows Media files. It also sports a built-in FM radio, which might, for some people, make up for the price difference between it and the iPod. As well, you can record the FM radio broadcasts as MP3 files.
   Sony NWHD1 Network
   Walkman
Price: 20 gigabyte drive, $500
Here we go again, another iPod rival with a higher price than what you pay for the 20-gigabyte Apple music player. With this tiny model that weighs less than four ounces (the claim is that it’s the smallest hard drive-based MP3 player in the world) Sony forgets about its obsession with the MiniDisc. However, the NWHD1 does use the Sony proprietary ATRAC3 format to play back music, so that MP3, WMA and WAV files are converted as they’re ported to the player. As well the NWHD1 only works with the bundled SonicStage software Perhaps its most compelling feature is that it has a 30-hour battery life, which blows all its other competitors out of the water.
   [email protected]

Game makers eye iTunes success against pirating

BY PETER WILSON VANCOUVER SUN

DOWNLOADS I Last week, Vancouver art director Tavis Dunn used a new program called Steam to download PC gaming’s most anticipated title of the year, Half-Life 2, to his computer’s hard drive.
   This was a week before the official release date of the game which, ironically, had been delayed for year because the first version of its code had been pirated and posted to the Internet.
   So is Dunn, who works for Greedy Productions — producers of such popular gamer-oriented TV shows as Electric Playground — just another over-eager downloader of pirated games?
   Well, no. Steam — unlike Kazaa, Limewire, eDonkey 2000, BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer programs — is a creation of the game’s own developer, Seattle-based Valve Corp.
   And Steam, which allows for complete game downloads and seamless invisible updates, could just be the first sign that an industry that loses some $3 billion US each year to piracy is considering operating its own legal download sites, just like the music industry.
   Greedy Productions’ executive producer Victor Lucas — who noted that two hugely popular games Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas were recently pirated to the Net — sees the arrival of Steam as the beginning of a change brought about by peer-to-peer networks.
   “People in any kind of content development are looking at the success of iTunes and Apple’s dominance of the music-playing sector and questioning what the implications are for future media delivery,” said Lucas.
   He said that just as filmmakers are looking at an iTunes-style delivery system, he “wouldn’t doubt that somewhere down the road an iteration of a game service will be out there.”
   Because distributors of the physical version of Half-Life 2 objected to any Net-based pre-release of the game, Dunn had to wait a full week after his download completed, to play it.
   The game was unlocked by Steam at midnight Monday.
   Even so, Dunn likes the convenience of it all.
   “I don’t have the hassle of going to the store and picking up the box,” said Dunn. “It saves on all the packaging and that kind of thing.”
   No wonder games producers might be thinking about their own download systems.
   The piracy loss figures — in a substantial part attributable to peer-to-peer downloading — put forward by various content providers is staggering, even though some of the figures are considered by analysts to be highly speculative.
   According to a U.S. Justice Department report, the music and movie industries lose $250 billion US annually and the software industry has put its losses for 2003 at $29 billion.
   Whatever the real numbers are, there’s no doubt that there’s a ton of downloading of pirated content going on out there.
   The most recent figures for Canada — released by Ipsos-Reid in May before a controversial court ruling that peer-to-peer music downloading is legal in Canada — showed that 32 per cent of Canadians adults had downloaded at least one song from the Net.
   And just 15 per cent of those were from fee-paying sites, which means by far the vast majority of music downloads are of pirated content. And the survey didn’t cover teens, who are the most likely to use peer-to-peer systems to download.
   The arrival of pay sites and systems has changed the outlook somewhat, at least in the United States. There some 20 million have paid for songs in the past six months, a rise of 120 per cent.
   However, the survey shows that, again, teens are not among them, possibly because they lack money and have no credit cards.
   So far, most surveys have concentrated on music, but if you look at most peer-to-peer programs, they carry a wide variety of software and games and, increasingly full length movies.
   A quick search of Limewire, for example, showed that more than a dozen alleged copies of the current hit The Polar Express were said to be available for download. However, without downloading, it would be impossible to know whether these are, in fact, full-length versions and what their quality is.
   Another search, for the software favourite Photoshop CS, turned up more than 250 listings of everything from the full program to serial numbers to activation workarounds.
   In other words, if you build a peer-to-peer system, the pirates will come, bearing software, music and movies.
   The legal situation on this is somewhat confused. In Canada, the Copyright Review Board has said that downloading music and movies from peer-to-peer networks is legal. And that’s because this country tacks on a levy up to $25 on such devices as MP3 players, with the money to go to content creators to make up for their losses.
   As well there is a levy on blank tapes, CDs and DVDs.
   In the U.S., the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles has ruled that peer-to-peer software developers aren’t liable for any copyright infringement by downloaders if they have no way to stop them from doing it.
   This means that peer-to-peer software developers and distributors are free to continue selling their products. However, file sharing itself has been ruled in lower courts as being against U.S. copyright laws.
   The music industry in the U.S. has already moved legally against downloaders.
   In October, the Recording Industry Association of America filed 762 new lawsuits against alleged file traders using peer-to-peer sharing services.
   Since September of 2003 the RIAA has filed more than 5,500 lawsuits.
   And now the movie industry through the Motion Picture Association of America, has also entered the legal battleground.
   The MPAA said in November that it would track down people who distribute movies on peer-topeer networks by identifying them through their Internet Protocol addresses .
   And this week it sued individuals in the U.S. — 200 according to some news reports although the MPAA isn’t saying exactly how many — who were identified only by their IP addresses.
   Among the movies alleged to have been on offer in September and October were Troy, Spider-Man 2, White Chicks and The Manchurian Candidate.
   Unlike the music industry, which went after people who offered hundreds of songs, the MPAA is taking on those who may have offered a single movie.
   They face as much as $150,000 in damages.
   John Malcolm, the association’s director of worldwide anti-piracy operations said one copy could easily become tens of thousands of copies available round the world.
   “We do not believe that any amount of illegal use is sanctioned,” said Malcolm.
   One of the more interesting side effects of peer-to-peer downloading, largely a result of programs like Kazaa, is the number of spyware and adware programs — and possibly viruses — that are clogging up PCs around the world.
   The largest such company, Claria, made $35 million US in 2003 for the inclusion of adware in peer-topeer and other free programs offered on the Net.
   [email protected]

GLENN BAGLO/VANCOUVER SUN Game maker Valve Corp. created Steam to allow legal downloads of its much-anticipated Half-Life 2.

It’s called Telus HomeSitter, a new Internet service geared primarily to residential customers, but it might be the answer for small business owners requiring an extra “eye” in their offices or stores.

That’s the claim of Telus‘ Internet services director Blair Miller, who said in an interview Thursday the new service provides “peace of mind” for companies, including those with multiple stores.

“This is a great application for small businesses,” Miller said. “It’s not a security system with third-party monitoring. But if your alarm goes off at night, HomeSitter allows you to look in and see what’s happening.

“And you can also see everything in the office while you’re away. You can keep an eye on the pulse of the business.”

B.C. Civil Liberties Association executive director Murray Mollard said that businesses applying the service could run into problems with the provincial Personal Information Protection Act because it might infringe on employees’ or others’ privacy rights.

“It could run afoul of that,” Mollard said in an interview. “I think it will be very difficult for employers to set up video surveillance without justification. In a business context, there’s no doubt that if it’s monitoring employees or if it’s used to collect video images of third parties, there’s a legal obligation.

“The test involves reasonableness. And that depends on the purposes in which the information is collected and why is it being used.”

Miller replied that Telus doesn’t advise companies to use the service to monitor employees and that it’s a great way to monitor business locations after business hours. “It’s up to the business owners and the employees as to how they want to apply it.”

The new service, which was launched this week by Telus, involves a multiple video camera network that provides constant security in your home or business, Telus said.

It allows subscribers to monitor as many as four areas of their homes, vacation cabins or businesses remotely. Customers can monitor from their desk at work or from a cell phone, especially one with video streaming.

Customers could be in an office, another city or even another country and yet keep an eye on how their children or elderly parents are doing at home. The system could also be set up to notify your computer at home if there has been movement detected in your home or business, especially near cash registers.

According to a Telus news release, HomeSitter allows customers peace-of-mind by allowing them to remotely access the system through a private account via any high speed Internet connection. Viewers can view either real-time streaming video or short video files recorded automatically after a camera’s motion sensor detects movement. HomeSitter can be configured so customers can be notified by wireless phone, pager, or e-mail when motion is detected.

The system is very secure, Telus added. It uses wireless technology, so there are no wires running around the home or business.

Telus said the service builds on the Telus home networking product that was launched a few months ago.

There is 24-hour technical support and it is offered for $9.95 a month for high speed Telus customers or $14.95 or others, Telus said.

Cameras start at $249.95 each and are available from Telus.

Miller said the system is expandable, with a business able to access up to five stores at one time.

“At this point, it’s directed more at residential customers,” he added, “but we see a vast potential for applying it to small businesses.”

He said the response so far has been very good.

The Telus news release states that Telus worked with Toronto-based broadband software developer Casero to introduce the new service.

“Telus has a reputation in the industry for driving new service development that leverages its investment in broadband infrastructure,” Casero president and CEO Kevin Kimsa said in a statement.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

The next time your phone rings and you think you should answer because the caller ID says it’s your mother or your boss, think again.

A Vancouver company is cashing in on a security flaw in telephone caller ID that allows callers to take on bogus identities and appear to be calling from any number they choose.

Totally Connected Security announced Monday that for $15 a month, plus five to 10 cents a minute, customers can call anywhere in North America and masquerade as whoever they want to be.

The Vancouver service comes on the heels of the Web-based Camophone service, which allows anyone with a credit card or $5 US in a Pay Pal account to choose the number that will be displayed by the recipient’s caller ID.

So any call could be coming from a bill collector, a telemarketer, a con artist, or anyone else who wants to hide their true identity and get you to pick up the phone.

“I can call you from any number I want, including 911,” said Ryan Purita, senior security specialist with Totally Connected. “Caller ID spoofing has been around for a couple of years, but no one has ever offered the service.

“The only people who knew about it were hackers and people who knew telephone systems like the back of their hand. I thought, ‘This is such a cool feature, why don’t I offer it to the public?'”

Purita said the service would allow callers such as bill collectors to convince people to pick up calls they might otherwise have screened.

Caller ID spoofing can take advantage of any phone service that uses caller ID, and the Vancouver offering has Telus lawyers scrambling to see if there’s anything they can do to about it.

“We’re aware of the practice,” said Telus spokesman Shawn Hall. He said the company’s security department “is taking this issue very seriously.”

“We are monitoring the situation and will take all appropriate action,” said Hall, adding he doesn’t know what that action could be.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple Computers is hoping to boost sales for its phenomenally popular iPod digital music player by shipping new devices that will also store 25,000 photos.

A 40-gigabyte version will sell for $499 US ($613 Cdn) and a 60-gigabyte version for $599 ($736 Cdn), Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said. The new iPod will hold 15 hours of music.

“We think music-plus-photos is the next big thing,” Jobs said at a glitzy unveiling Tuesday where he was joined by U2 band members, including singer Bono. “Everyone has a digital camera right now. So everyone is taking tons of digital pictures and building digital libraries.”

Apple also released, in conjunction with Bono and U2, a special-edition black version of the iPod, with a red tracking wheel. A 20-gigabyte version of that iPod, available in mid-November, will sell for $349 ($429 Cdn).

Apple is capitalizing on strong demand for iPods, first unveiled in October 2001 and now the fastest-growing product made by the company. Over all, iPods accounted for 23 per cent of Apple’s $2.36 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, up from 12 per cent a year earlier. The sales surge helped make Apple the second-best performing stock in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index this year.

Jobs, 49, built the company’s success around the “classic” white iPod and a “mini” version released in February that comes in five colors. Apple sold 5.74 million of the players, including 2.02 million in the quarter ended Sept. 25. Total iPod revenue more than quadrupled to $537 million in the period compared to a year earlier.

Apple also said it expanded its iTunes online music site to nine more European countries.

Apple’s iPod sales growth will continue, say analysts such as Merrill Lynch & Co.’s Steven Milunovich. He estimates that Apple will ship 2.68 million units during the holiday season, almost four times as many as the company sold a year ago.

Apple began shipping the mini overseas in July, helping bolster sales.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

“I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate object… but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

– – –

OTTAWA — A Florida professor has built living brain cells into a “brain in a dish” that’s able to control an aircraft simulator — but also raises questions about whether he has created a living, and even conscious, brain.

Thomas DeMarse of the University of Florida took some neurons (brain cells) from a live rat, then made them multiply into a mass of 25,000.

The neurons have formed connections with each other, just like brains in living animals.

And with 60 electrodes to send computer signals in and brain signals out, the biomedical engineer says his “living brain” has learned to keep a simulated aircraft stable in varying weather conditions.

Hey, says a Canadian professor of horror literature: That’s what Dr. Frankenstein did!

“In a way it is Frankenstinian because he’s essentially creating another life form. It’s not really a rat,” says Laurie Harnick, who teaches American literature and horror films at the University of Western Ontario.

“The cells have, if not consciousness, some sort of mechanism to make something happen” in the flight simulator.

However, DeMarse says the goal isn’t to build living brains.

“We’re interested in studying how brains compute,” he says in a written summary of his work. (He couldn’t be reached for an interview this week.)

DeMarse says computers made of metal and silicon have never mastered the flexibility we have in living brains. He wants to apply the skills of our brains to computers.

For instance, he says, a human can see an unfamiliar object and understand right away that it’s a table or a chair — something very difficult to program into a computer.

The experimental brain “is essentially a dish with 60 electrodes arranged in a grid at the bottom. Over that we put the living cortical neurons from rats, which rapidly begin to reconnect themselves, forming a living neural network — a brain,” The connections didn’t happen randomly, he added.

“You see one [neuron] extend a process, pull it back, extend it out, and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who’s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself.”

Further, he says that his “brain in a dish” gradually built new neural connections after he hooked up the electrodes to an airplane simulator. At first it just let the aircraft drift randomly. Now he claims it stabilizes the flight in virtual weather conditions.

“I suppose in a way he’s creating a new organism, with roots in something we do recognize,” said Harnick.

The Florida biomedical engineer and his partner have a $500,000 US research grant from the National Science Foundation.

PROBING THE BRAIN:

How scientists are using rat brain cells to fly a model airplane:

Network is hooked to a computer.

Neurons analyse and process data.

Some 25,000 rat neurons are grown in culture over an array of 60 electrodes, creating a neural network.

Model airplane equipped with onboard camera feeds visual information about simulator-created horizon into the neural network.

In an attempt to keep the plan stable and level, neurons send signals back to plane’s control surfaces.

Source: Vancouver Sun

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

NEW YORK — People who use public or workplace computers for e-mail, instant messaging and web searching have a new privacy risk to worry about: Google’s free new tool that indexes a PC’s contents for quickly locating data.

If it’s installed on computers at libraries and Internet cafes, users could unwittingly allow people who follow them on the PCs, for example, to see sensitive information in e-mails they’ve exchanged. That could mean revealed passwords, conversations with doctors, or viewed web pages detailing online purchases.

“It’s clearly a very powerful tool for locating information on the computer,” said Richard Smith, a privacy and security consultant in Cambridge, Mass. “On the flip side of things, it’s a perfect spy program.”

Google Desktop Search, publicly released Thursday in a “beta” test phase for computers running the latest Windows operating systems, automatically records e-mail you read through Outlook, Outlook Express or the Internet Explorer browser. It also saves copies of web pages you view through IE and chat conversations using America Online Inc.’s instant-messaging software. And it finds Word, Excel and PowerPoint files stored on the computer.

If you’re the computer’s only user, the software is helpful “as a photographic memory of everything you’ve seen on the computer,” said Marissa Mayer, director of consumer web products at Google Inc.

The giant index remains on the computer and isn’t shared with Google. The company can’t access it remotely even if it gets a subpoena ordering it to do so, Mayer said.

Where the privacy and security concerns arise is when the computer is shared.

Type in “hotmail.com” and you’ll get copies, or stored caches, of messages that previous users have seen. Enter an e-mail address and you can read all the messages sent to and from that address. Type “password” and get password reminders that were sent back via e-mail.

Acknowledging the concerns, Mayer said managers of shared computers should think twice about installing the software until Google develops advanced features like password protection and multi-user support.

In the meantime, users of shared PCs can look for telltale signs.

A multicoloured swirl in the system tray at the lower right corner of the computer desktop means the software is running. A user can right-click on that to exit the program — thereby preventing it from recording web surfing, e-mail and chat sessions.

Users can also surf on non-IE browsers like Opera and Mozilla, although the software may index web pages already stored before the software gets installed.

Managers of public access terminals can also install software or deny users administrative privileges so they can’t install unauthorized programs, such as Google’s. In fact, many libraries and cybercafes already do so.

Herb Jones, owner of Herb’s Cyber Cafe in Oblong, Ill., tried out the desktop search program on his computer and likes it — but he won’t install it on his two public terminals. In fact, he’s written software to prevent customers from installing programs like it.

“Otherwise, they can put on their own files if they want, a worm, a virus, anything, and you’re shut down,” Jones said.

The FedEx Kinko’s chain is also taking preventive measures. It’s deploying software designed to automatically refresh its public access terminals to a virgin state for each new customer. So any errant software would disappear, as would any personal settings, files or web caches, said Maggie Thill, a spokeswoman with FedEx Kinko’s.

But policies do vary, and no precaution is foolproof, warned Carol Brey-Casiano, president of the American Library Association and director of public libraries in El Paso, Texas.

“We do our best to protect our patrons and computers and network, but as you can imagine, thousands of people can use public computers in a given week,” she said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

CREDIT: The Associated Press The Google Desktop search engine was unveiled at http://desktop.google.com, and marks Google’s latest attempt to become even more indispensable to the millions of people who entrust the company to find virtually anything on the web.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google Inc. became the first tech heavyweight to tackle the daunting task of uncluttering computers, introducing a program that quickly scours hard drives for documents, e-mails, instant messages and past web searches.

With the free desktop program, Google hopes to build upon the popularity of its leading Internet search engine and become even more indispensable to the millions of people who entrust the Mountain View-based company to find virtually anything online.

The new product, available at http://desktop.google.com, ups the ante in Google’s intensifying battle with software giant Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., which owns the world’s second most popular search engine.

Google’s desktop invasion heralds a momentous step into a crucial realm — the challenge of managing the infoglut that has accumulated during the past decade as society becomes more tethered to increasingly powerful computers.

“We think of this [program] as the photographic memory of your computer,” said Marissa Mayer, Google’s director of consumer web products. “It’s pretty comprehensive. If there’s anything you once saw on your computer screen, we think you should be able to find it again quickly.”

Although its desktop program can be used exclusively offline to probe hard drives, Google designed it to run in a browser so it will meld with its online search engine. Google.com visitors who have the new program installed on their computer will see a “desktop” tab above the search engine toolbar and all their search results will include a section devoted to the hard drive in addition to the web.

The desktop search program could be the bridge to a day when Google begins offering consumers the option of storing some files directly on the company’s own computer servers, said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch.

“It would be the next logical step if this is a success,” he said.

As it is, the desktop search program provides Google with a powerful magnet to lure traffic from its chief online search rivals, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo Inc., both of which have been improving their technology.

“Other major search engines will undoubtedly launch similar offerings in the next few months but they will have to match Google’s offering to keep their customers happy or best it to gain new converts,” Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li wrote in a report.

A smattering of lesser-known companies, such as X1 Technologies, already offer desktop search programs. Google is the first company among high-tech’s household names to try to make it easier for people to sift through the information mishmash on computer hard drives. It dispenses with the confinement of Microsoft’s current model of files and folders.

Redmond, Wash.-based Micro-soft has been working on a desktop search program for several years only to be trumped by Google. AOL and another search engine maker, Ask Jeeves, are reportedly close to entering the fray, while Yahoo has discussed the possibility of developing a desktop search program.

Google is betting the program will expand its search engine audience and encourage even more online searches than it already processes — a pattern that would yield more advertising revenue, the company’s main moneymaker.

Leery of raising privacy concerns that have shadowed its recently introduced e-mail service, Google is stressing that the desktop search program doesn’t provide a peephole into the hard drive, even when the product connects with the online search engine.

“It’s totally private,” Mayer said. “Google does not know what happens when the hard drive is searched.”

By default, the program will track performance, bugs and other metrics without recording personal data, the company says.

Pam Dixon, executive director for the World Privacy Forum, said she will withhold judgment until she thoroughly reviews the new program.

“The key question will be if this thing ever phones home to the mother ship.”

Google plans eventually to offer some kind of password-protection to restrict desktop searches for individual users.

© The Vancouver Province 2004

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. — Google Inc. became the first tech heavyweight to tackle the daunting task of uncluttering computers, introducing a program on Thursday that quickly scours hard drives for documents, e-mails, instant messages and past Web searches.

With the free desktop program, Google hopes to build upon the popularity of its Internet-leading search engine and become even more indispensable to the millions of people who entrust the Mountain View-based company to find virtually anything online. Google’s desktop search program is so powerful that analysts cautioned computer users to carefully consider what kind of material they want indexed, particularly if they’re sharing a computer.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Computer hackers are increasingly targeting industrial control systems — including those at nuclear power stations, utilities and transport infrastructure — says a report that promises to “shock many in the engineering and IT community.”

The study by security experts at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and PA Consulting Group says there has been a 10-fold increase since 2000 in successful cyber attacks on process and supervisory control and data acquisition systems.

“Many of the attacked systems were responsible for the operation of critical services,” BCIT and PA say.

Recent assaults include a Slammer Worm infiltration of an Ohio nuclear plant and a wireless insurgency at a sewage system in Australia.

Process control and automation systems have been widely regarded as immune to external attack because they were based on proprietary technologies and were isolated from other information technology systems.

“But the 10 reported cyber attacks in 2003 are likely to be just the tip of the iceberg, as few companies are willing to report such incidents for fear of attracting further attack or negative publicity,” the study found.

“Industry estimates indicate that between 100 and 500 unreported industrial cyber attacks occur every year.”

The increase in cyber assaults on industrial systems is attributed to an increasing alignment of process control and corporate IT systems, the fact that corporate IT security measures often cannot be applied to process control systems, and “increasingly powerful and malicious” worms, viruses and hackers.

“The results were a surprise to us because they indicate that industry has been focusing their security efforts in the wrong direction,” says BCIT researcher Eric Byres.

“The real threat is coming from outside the organization rather than from within, as most of us originally believed. The variety and complexity of the different attack vectors is also a big concern. We can’t just throw in a firewall and hope all our security problems will be solved.”

Process control and automation systems have been widely regarded as immune to external attack because they were based on proprietary technologies and were isolated from other information technology systems.

“But the 10 reported cyber attacks in 2003 are likely to be just the tip of the iceberg, as few companies are willing to report such incidents for fear of attracting further attack or negative publicity,” the study found.

“Industry estimates indicate that between 100 and 500 unreported industrial cyber attacks occur every year.”

The increase in cyber assaults on industrial systems is attributed to an increasing alignment of process control and corporate IT systems, the fact that corporate IT security measures often cannot be applied to process control systems, and “increasingly powerful and malicious” worms, viruses and hackers.

“The results were a surprise to us because they indicate that industry has been focusing their security efforts in the wrong direction,” says BCIT researcher Eric Byres.

“The real threat is coming from outside the organization rather than from within, as most of us originally believed.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

American and French scientists have created a “caring” house plant equipped with motion sensors and cameras to gather information, complete with a computerized brain that “learns” its owner’s routines and can tell if these stray from the norm.

Equal parts leafy adviser and calming potted friend, the plant — a prototype at Accenture Technology Labs in Chicago that’s expected to be ready for sale within about five years — uses artificial intelligence to know if its owner is eating properly, experiencing fear, loneliness and pain, or suffering from memory loss.

It’s destined for an emerging eldercare market for robotic devices designed to give assistance to those who aren’t ready to move into a retirement village but need assistance to stay safely in their own home. By 2050, 30 per cent of the world’s population will be over the age of 65 and in need of everything from specialized financial planning to solutions for managing the burden of institutional care.

Hiding technology within familiar objects such as plants isn’t only entertaining and commercially marketable. It’s designed to increase seniors’ comfort with technology they might otherwise deem intrusive, said Agata Opalach, an Accenture researcher based in Sophia Antipolis, France.

“Assistance [emanating from] everyday objects becomes more acceptable to the person who needs help, it puts them at ease,” said Opalach, who spearheads the global management and IT consulting firm’s Intelligent Home Services Initiative.

“We could have used an artificial plant, but then it wouldn’t have been as interesting,” she said. “People get very attached and emotional about caring about other living things.”

Miniaturized sensors in and around the pot gauge whether the plant itself is getting enough sunlight or water. The rest of its wiring is focused on helping the owner: Tiny motion and pressure sensors, microphones and discreetly positioned cameras feed data to a computer that analyses a person’s gaze, posture, the speed and gait of their walk, and their interaction with other objects in the room, in order to decide if family members or a hospital need to be alerted to a potential problem.

Interaction with the plant doesn’t have to be health-related. Its facial recognition software might deduce the human needs a little extra TLC, at which point it could strike up a conversation.

A forgetful owner could hold up a pillbox to be reminded of instructions for taking the medication, or a framed photograph and ask the plant to identify whose picture was taken. The plant could then project more digitized family photos on to a screen, as a kind of slide show.

The plant is also aware enough to know when its affections are unwelcome. “You don’t want to be surprised by a plant,” Opalach added.

Paul Johnston, chairman of the International Federation of Robotics and a vice-president of the Ottawa-based industry association Precarn Inc., said manufacturers are only beginning to realize the lucrative potential of devices that would let anxious children monitor frail parents’ daily routines, or alleviate the loneliness and boredom associated with solitary living.

Johnson cautioned there are many ways to tackle elder care: Researchers from Dalhousie University in Halifax, for example, are developing sophisticated experimental cameras to monitor an older person’s home — without the cover of an accompanying plant.

The most valuable innovations may turn out to be robust “helpmate” robots that would assist the elderly in and out of shower stalls or beds, do light housework and make meals — tasks traditionally performed by nurses and orderlies, he said.

“I think we have to separate out the technology’s usefulness from somebody having a new gimmick that’s not exactly useful.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2004