Oh, for the ring of common sense

Steve Makris
Province

The use of the most popular teen gadget, the cellphone, is a contentious issue in many schools. It is the subject of privacy concerns among students and teachers, and often disrupts classes when it is used by students without regard for the people trying to concentrate on work nearby.

One problem, educators say, is in equipping adolescents with a veritable Internet broadcasting studio. There have been embarrassing incidents of classroom encounters and activities being posted on the Net. But even text messaging or silent cyber-cruising in class can be disruptive.

Used responsibly, cellphones are a boon to parents and students alike — to stay in touch, share files, use as a calculator and calendar, homework reminder, voice recorder, camera and — outside classroom hours — as an entertainment device filled with music and video.

– The Palm Centro from Rogers Wireless, for instance, is a do-it-all full keyboard multi-function phone device for younger users.

Google Maps are lifesavers when making your way to a new school and an easy-to-flick switch on the top of the Centro quickly flips from ring tone to vibrate. It keeps all conversations in messaging-like display, sends text, pictures, audio and video clips, keeps all your personal e-mails and uses Pocket Tunes for managing audio, video and audio books.

You can create, edit and view Word and Excel compatible documents, as well as view PowerPoint and PDF files.

It can also be used as a modem for connecting a laptop to the Internet via Bluetooth and comes with calculator, calendar, camcorder, camera, contacts, memos, messaging, Quick Tour, tasks, voice dial, voice memo, web and world clock.

– The Nokia 5310 XpressMusic from Rogers Wireless easily fits in a pencil case or backpack pocket and includes an alarm clock, to-do list, notes, calculator, stopwatch and countdown timer.

The calendar allows up to 3,000 entries, with week-view functionality including homework reminder, memo, call, and birthday notes. It can synchronize with MS Outlook contacts, calendar, notes and comes with Nokia PC Suite connectivity via USB and Bluetooth. It’s also a music phone.

– Samsung’s Instinct from Bell has a full QWERTY touch-screen keyboard and includes a stylus option. It supports expandable memory of up to eight gigabytes with a Micro SD Card, over-the-air access to notes, tasks and to-do lists, easy file sharing with Bluetooth beaming, GPS navigation capabilities and a two-megapixel camera/camcorder.

– Parents will like GPS-based services from Telus Kid Find and Bell‘s Seek and Find service. It shows where your child (and their phone) is at any time on a home Internet-connected computer or a cellphone screen. Parents can even see their child’s actual path home. It lets you know when your child arrives at certain destinations, such as being at school on time. Both services work with a wide variety of “parent” and “child” phones for $5 a month.

– The cordless ICD-UX70S Digital Voice Recorder ($109.99) has a built-in one-gigabyte Flash memory that lets users record up to 290 hours of lectures, personal notes and more. You can even play back your favourite MP3 audio files and listen on the included stereo headphones. It features five recording modes and works with Windows and Mac computers.

© The Vancouver Province 2008

 

Your computer should be scanning every hour for security updates, patches

Darcy Keith
Sun

E-mail viruses are so yesterday.

These days, it’s your browser that has online criminals salivating.

Network worms and viruses spread by mass e-mails are unlikely to ever become extinct, but they are no longer the primary weapon used by the bad guys of the virtual world to steal your identity or life’s savings.

As the world catches on to the dangers of opening unknown e-mail attachments and better spam filters are created, the focus of attacks is turning to the Web itself.

“Attackers now are taking advantage of security flaws in the browsers that may exist, and using those to attack the user,” explains Marc Fossi, manager of development security response for Symantec Security in Calgary. “They may compromise a website, maybe a legitimate site, so that when people normally go there, they are attacked by modifications that the attacker has made to that site.” That might mean releasing a Trojan Horse virus or some other malicious code onto your computer.

These dubious deeds often are orchestrated through phishing techniques that mimic an actual site, such as one for an online bank. “They’ve gotten so professional they can make it look almost identical to your actual bank’s website,” says Fossi. “So unless you’re checking for certificates and things like that, it’s tough to tell.”

According to Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for the security firm Sophos in Oxford, England, there are 15,000 new web pages every day that are hosting malicious code. That’s one every five seconds.

It’s not easy for Web users to navigate around the infected sites. In the past, avoiding pornographic or casino websites would likely steer a surfer away from the problem. But these days, perfectly legitimate sites — including those run by government and major retailers and electronics suppliers — could contain harmful embedded computer code.

“This is a real worry because we can’t give simple instructions to people to avoid these problems. There’s nothing normally for the user to see because infection is silent,” says Cluley. “The best advice we give is make sure your browser is hardened and patched, and really keep your antivirus up to date.”

And that means your antivirus software shouldn’t be searching for updates just once a week or even each day. Your computer should automatically be on the lookout for new downloads every hour, Cluley suggests. Attackers, he warns, are becoming highly sophisticated and are navigating around security software roadblocks at lightning speed.

There’s a vast global underground economy ready to snap up information stolen from computer users. These professional criminals will hire computer coders to hijack your credit, banking or identity information, and then they will sell it online in a manner akin to a Wall Street trading room floor.

“It’s gotten so involved now that you are seeing microeconomics coming into play. There’s supply and demand, and pricing is based on that,” says Fossi.

That means pricing for a certain type of stolen information is based on how much of it is already available. “You’re even seeing bulk pricing, just on credit card numbers. You can buy 100 cards for 40 cents each, but if you buy 200 cards, you can get them for 20 cents each. For bank accounts, those with a higher balance will sell for more than one with a lower balance,” he says.

Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Myspace, are particularly vulnerable to phishing, because users generally trust them, notes Fossi. An attacker often logs onto such a site and posts a link to a malicious website or supposed video, giving them the ability to quickly spread malicious code and spam through a victim’s social network.

“The essential problem is personal computers aren’t really personal anymore. You think because it’s on your desk it’s just between you and this lump of grey plastic in front of you. When in fact, you’re sharing it with potentially millions of people online,” says Cluley.

Cluley says another increasingly used tactic is what’s known as “scareware.” This is a deceptive message that pops up while one is browsing the Internet, stating that your computer is infected with a virus.

“These bogus warnings are trying to get you to buy a bogus security product, which you would purchase with your credit card,” says Cluley.

After running the software download, it would claim to have cleaned up your hard drive. “But of course, you didn’t have to spend any money in the first place, because you weren’t infected.

“My general advice is, don’t believe everything you’ve seen on the Internet. There are lots of bad guys out there that will try to con you.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

Bold will be in Rogers stores next week

Helen Morris
Sun

The latest BlackBerry from Research In Motion is set to hit the Canadian market today. But the new Bold may not attract the same scores of eager buyers who lined up around the block to snap up Apple’s iPhone 3G in July.

“There’s a huge difference in the sense that there’s not a crowd of geeks who follow the BlackBerry,” said Eamon Hoey, who looks at the telecommunications industry for management consultant Hoey Associates. “The BB does not have the following in the marketplace — the religious following, I might add — that Apple has that tends to buoy up the market.”

Rogers Wireless will be offering packages for the BlackBerry Bold online today and in their stores by the beginning of next week.

Odette Coleman at Rogers Wireless said that it is the company’s standard practice not to reveal pricing before a launch, but Jim Balsillie, the co-chief executive of Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion, told Reuters in May the handset will cost between $300 and $400.

But as with the iPhone, prices can drop.

“The pricing will change. … They’ll work their way down to something that is going to be more reasonable,” said Marc Perrella, vice-president of the technology group at IDC Canada. “The timing is pretty good; they’re in the back-to-school time period. And it’s a lead up to the Christmas shopping season.”

Research In Motion said on their website the Bold will let users “do more — do it faster.”

“It takes advantage of Rogers‘ investment in its high-speed 3G network, the HSDPA,” said Perrella. “The higher speed allows for a richer customer experience.”

Perrella thinks the many features in a single device will appeal to business and consumers.

“They’re being true to their established executive in the enterprise … but [also] the younger, hipper worker because that memory and capability also translates into handling social networking or YouTube Web-based streaming,” said Perrella. “You can now manipulate and edit items from Microsoft. … It is a dual-mode phone, so it has the 3G plus the Wi-Fi capability. … It also has GPS.”

Following a 12-hour test drive of the new multimedia device, Citi Investment Research analyst Jim Suva told clients in a note that the BlackBerry Bold is a “strong product,” but that the device is not revolutionary.

Suva wrote that the browser on the Bold is a “big improvement” on the older Curve and Pearl BlackBerrys. RIM says “colour and clarity come to life,” with the new device and Suva — testing the device by watching the movie Talladega Nights — said the display is noticeably better.

But Hoey remains skeptical.

“In general, the larger corporations who are the big users of these devices … tend not to buy the latest and greatest,” said Hoey. “Because they are price-sensitive, typically they buy the almost-discontinued models or near-to-be discontinued models. They tend to go on low-price BB models.”

Suva did report some 3G signal dropping on streets with highrise buildings, and on the 34th floor of his office.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

Richard Dooley
Sun

The odds of finding what New Brunswick scientist James Whitehead is looking for are astronomical even by his standards.

But a unique series of cameras stationed on rooftops in Canada, and across the world, is increasing the odds of finding — and recovering — a fresh meteorite if it tumbles through the atmosphere.

Whitehead, a geologist at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, is part of an international team of scientists that has trained high-tech cameras toward the heavens hoping to capture images of fireballs streaking across the night sky.

The aim is to use the photographs, along with a little basic trigonometry and a good timepiece, to estimate where the fireball struck the Earth with the hope of recovering what’s left of it.

For Whitehead, who’s leading the hunt in Eastern Canada, that’s as exciting a prospect as watching a meteor burn through the atmosphere and land outside his Fredericton office.

“They are windows on the formation of the solar system,” Whitehead said. “The more material we have, the more we can understand how the solar system was formed.”

The relatively inexpensive cameras — they cost about $200 apiece — are focused on the skies on rooftops scattered around North America. The United States has a network of 28 cameras.

Canada has 26 — in British Columbia, Alberta, Sas-katchewan, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces.

Since 2007 seven cameras, have been stationed around Atlantic Canada: three in Newfoundland, one in Nova Scotia and three in New Brunswick.

The camera network operates in concert, each camera poised to capture an image of a fireball, dramatic bolts of light that cross the heavens and illuminate the night sky.

From that data, scientists can work out the fireball’s trajectory and estimate where it came down.

Shooting stars differ from fireballs in that they are faint, but distinctive streaks of light through the sky.

No larger than a grain of sand, shooting stars usually burn up in the atmosphere.

Fireballs are larger and usually leave behind material when they hit the Earth. The trouble is finding it.

“Thousands have hit the ground, but they are easily overlooked or are so weathered that the material has been destroyed,” he said.

In North America, most of the ancient meteorites have been lost, scraped away by successive ice ages. But some estimates place the number of meteor impacts of 100 grams or larger at 36 per sq. kilometres. So finding a meteorite is possible, said Whitehead.

But while his cameras have captured images of fireballs, he’s yet to make that all important find himself.

Although Whitehead does advise the Canadian Space Agency about the possibility of the Earth being hit by large heavenly bodies, the All-Sky Camera network is not an early warning system for a doomsday rock striking the planet.

If a planet-shattering meteor gets picked up by the cameras, it’s too late, he said. “By the time we’d see it we’d be vapourized.”

Whitehead hopes to make the All-Sky Camera Project a living experiment for school children in the Atlantic provinces. He envisions a day when high school students can use the data from the cameras to hone their math skills and plot likely landing points for meteorites.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

Sinead Carew
Sun

NEW YORK – Apple Inc has issued a software update for the latest iPhone to help fix connection problems that led to a flurry of online complaints from customers, a European mobile service provider said on Tuesday.

T-Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telekom AG , said the software was available for users to download to their iPhones on Tuesday, but that it was not yet clear if the upgrade would fix all the connection problems.

“We have had complaints about connectivity in the Netherlands but have not had more complaints than usual for a 3G phone in Germany. Our technicians said today Apple has issued a software update but it is too early to tell if the problems are solved,” a T-Mobile spokesman said.

AT&T Inc the only U.S. network operator carrying the iPhone, confirmed that Apple had provided a software update but declined to give details about what it was aimed at fixing.

Apple, which sold about a million iPhones around the launch weekend in July, was not immediately available for comment.

One of the key attractions of the latest iPhone is its faster, third-generation (3G) Web connections when compared with the first iPhone that was launched in mid-2007.

However, users around the world have complained about dropped calls and inconsistent Internet speeds, with the phone often reverting to a slower technology known as Edge even in 3G areas.

Nomura analyst Richard Windsor and media reports have blamed faulty software on an Infineon Technologies AG chip for the problems. Infineon declined to comment about iPhone but noted that its chips work on 3G phones from suppliers such as Samsung Electronics Co <005930.KS> without problems.

The iPhone 3G has gone on sale in about 22 countries since its launch on July 11.

© Reuters 2008

 

Sun

1. Green Wi-Fi routers, D-Link, from $150 to $360

Go wireless green with D-Link’s new line of routers that can save up to 40 per cent in power usage. D-Link’s Green Ethernet technology automatically detects the link status and network cable length and adjusts power according to that. Wi-Fi scheduling lets you program when the Wi-Fi signals are turned on and off, to cut back even more on power use. The green routers include D-Link’s Xtreme N Gigabit Router DIR-655 at $150, D-Link Xtreme N Duo Media Router, DIR-855 at $360, and the Xtreme N Gaming Router DGL-4500 at $240. www.dlink.com.

2. Perfection V200 Photo Scanner, Epson, $90

Combining automatic scanning and 4,800-dpi resolution, this will scan images to e-mail, copy photos and documents, scan film, and restore faded colour photos. It has a built-in transparency unit feature to scan slides and negatives. www.epson.ca.

3. USB e-Buddy, Kinlan, $20

As your own personal MSN emote buddy, this three-inch cutie sits on your desk and translates the emoticons in your messages. A heart emoticon prompts your little pal’s head to glow while it twists and flaps. A blushing emoticon makes it — you guessed it — glow red. When a contact is online, your little buddy’s heart glows red in his chest. Somewhat saccharine, we’re not certain we’d put this on a desk in the office, but we know a lot of MSN-ers who’d say, “Aahhhhh” in that “isn’t that sweet” kind of way. www.kinlan.com.

4.. Satellite L300 and Satellite L350 laptop computers, Toshiba, starting at $630

Toshiba has announced its new Satellite lineup in time for back-to-school shopping, and these are the lower-priced entry-level models. Not as light or powerful as the higher-priced Satellites, but they have all the staples you need to replace a clunky desktop in a dorm room with a laptop. www.toshiba.ca.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

Sun

British researchers devise theory that would allow spaceships to travel faster than speed of light without breaking laws of physics

LONDON — Two physicists have boldly gone where no reputable scientists should go and devised a scheme to travel faster than the speed of light.

The advance could mean that Star Trek fantasies of interstellar civilizations and voyages powered by warp drive are now no longer the exclusive domain of science fiction writers.

Gerald Cleaver, an associate professor of physics at Baylor, and Richard Obousy have come up with a new twist on an existing idea to produce a warp drive that they believe can travel faster than the speed of light, without breaking the laws of physics. In their scheme, published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, a starship could “warp” space so that it shrinks ahead of the vessel and expands behind it.

By pushing the departure point many light years backwards while simultaneously bringing distant stars and other destinations closer, the warp drive effectively transports the starship from place to place at fasterthan-light speeds.

All this feat requires, says the study, is for scientists to harness a mysterious cosmic antigravity force, called dark energy.

Dark energy is thought to be responsible for speeding up the expansion rate of our universe as time moves on, just like it did after the Big Bang, when the universe expanded much faster than the speed of light for a very brief time.

This may come as a surprise since, according to relativity theory, matter cannot move through space faster than the speed of light, which is almost 300 million metres per second. But that theory applies only to unwarped “flat” space. And there is no limit on the speed with which space itself can move.

In the scheme outlined by Cleaver dark energy would be used to create the bubble. “Think of it like a surfer riding a wave,” said Cleaver. “The ship would be pushed by the spatial bubble and the bubble would be travelling faster than the speed of light.”

The new warp-drive work also draws on “string theory”, which suggests the universe is made up of multiple dimensions. We are used to four dimensions — height, width, length and time — but string theorists believe that there are a total of 10 dimensions and it is by changing the size of this 10th spatial dimension in front of the space ship that the Baylor researchers believe could alter the strength of the dark energy in such a manner to propel the ship faster than the speed of light.

Supercomputer to crunch Canada’s most complex number problems

Arielle Godbout
Sun

Canada’s most powerful supercomputer – 30 times more powerful than the system used by Environment Canada to forecast the weather – will be built by IBM Canada for the University of Toronto, the two organizations are expected to announce Thursday.

The supercomputer will be capable of performing 360 trillion calculations per second and has the capacity to potentially store half a million DVDs online, said Chris Pratt, IBM Canada’s strategic initiatives executive.

In what Pratt calls an innovative move, IBM will link two different “architectures” – the overall designs of how the computer chip performs – to create a hybrid with greater flexibility. The two systems will be able to work together but also independently.

By combining the two systems, the machine will be able to cater to many different kinds of calculations, Pratt said.

The supercomputer will also allow researchers to create more complex problems to solve, said physics professor Richard Peltier, the scientific director of the University of Toronto‘s SciNet Consortium, the affiliation of research hospitals that will acquire the supercomputer.

The machine will be used by scientists in a variety of fields including aerospace, astrophysics, and chemical and planetary physics, he said.

Peltier’s own research in climate change will be greatly enhanced by the supercomputer, he said. Predicting the warming of any region involves simulations of the interaction of a number of factors including the atmosphere, the ocean and the vegetation.

“And this requires that we integrate a model of this complexity over time scales of several hundred years, beginning at the onset of the Industrial Revolution . . . up to, let’s say, 2200,” Peltier added.

Not only will the supercomputer speed up calculations that currently take weeks or even months to perform, but it will allow for greater precision, he said.

“What we want to be able to do is make predictions, for example, as to what the nature of the climate change will be that Ontario or Alberta will experience,” Peltier explained. “We want to be regionally specific.”

While Peltier said he is currently able to predict variations in the surface’s temperature at points separated by 500 kilometres, the new computer will allow the calculations to be made at points less than 100 kilometres apart.

The supercomputer, with a five-year operating budget of $50 million, is expected to be fully operational by next summer, but certain parts of the two systems may be operational as early as January.

© Canwest News Service 2008

 

Gillian Shaw
Sun

1 iF200 alarm clock and speaker system, Edifier, $37

Edifier, which has its North American headquarters in Richmond, has several speaker systems that work with the new iPhone 3G, including this retro alarm clock version that comes in three colours — black, white and hot pink — and is selling at Wal-Mart and computer stores. It also works as a charging dock for your iPhone or iTouch. You’ll need special instructions to make it work with your iPhone or iTouch so check it out first at www.edifier.ca.

2 USB Docking Station with VGA, $135

We’re always in favour of clearing the computer clutter and this dock turns a single USB 2.0 port into a multiple connection point. Click in one connection and you get a VGA port, a 10/100 RJ45 network port, dual (3.5 mm phono) audio ports plus four more USB ports. Now instead of crawling around behind the computer to connect and reconnect every cable when it’s time to move it, or when you need to shift the printer or the scanner to another machine, all you have to do is go to this slim little box on the desktop where everything is neatly lined up. Nice. You can see it at www.startech.com.

3 Messenger Fusion Laptop Cases, Targus, $80

These laptop cases come with interchangeable shoulder straps to change their look. One comes with a combo of mushroom, burnt orange and khaki straps, another with grey, lime green and black. They protect from the rain and the padded laptop section fits computers with up to 15.4-inch screens www.targus.com/ca.

4 USB four-in-one Web Cam, Brando, $23

At this price, that’s US dollars, we’re not certain how long these four functions will keep it up but it’s a multi-tasking gadget that quadruples as a Web cam, microphone, fan and LED light. Plus it’s a space-age looking gadget that attaches to any surface with its flexible sucker. At http://www.brando.com.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

Widespread cries of ‘ripoff’ fail to move the 2 telecom giants

Meagan Fitzpatrick
Province

OTTAWA — Bell Mobility’s plan to charge some cellphone customers for incoming text messages takes effect Friday, despite the consumer backlash, a lawsuit, and an intervention by the federal industry minister.

Customers whose cellphone bundles don’t include text messaging will be charged 15 cents every time they receive a text message, and Telus users will face the same fate Aug. 24.

The companies already charged 15 cents for outgoing messages sent by users not on a text plan, and they say the added charge for incoming messages will affect a minority of customers.

“About 95 per cent of text messages on Bell‘s network are sent and received by clients on text bundles. Anyone who plans to send and receive a significant number of text messages really should be on a plan,” said Bell‘s associate director of media relations, Jason Laszlo.

The company has adjusted its text bundles and, starting at an extra $5 a month, subscribers can get unlimited incoming texts and 250 outgoing ones. For $15 per month, customers receive unlimited outgoing and incoming messages.

Laszlo said Bell customers have been most concerned about paying to receive unsolicited spam messages, but he said the company has top-notch anti-spam protection on its networks. If spam somehow slips through, the charges will be adjusted.

Since news of the fee started spreading in May, however, customers and critics have vented their frustrations on blogs, signed an online petition initiated by the New Democratic Party, and joined a Facebook group –which has more than 35,000 members –and two Quebec residents have each launched a lawsuit against the telecom giants.

The uproar caught the ear of the federal industry minister, Jim Prentice, who in early July described the new fee as an “ill-thought-out decision.”

Prentice said he had no desire to interfere with the day-to-day business decisions of two private companies, but he said he had a duty to protect consumers. He asked the CEOs of Bell Mobility and Telus to meet with him before Friday to explain their pricing “with a view to finding a solution that provides the best service to consumers at the best price.”

Prentice’s efforts, even if they were genuine, failed to produce such a solution, said NDP Leader Jack Layton.

“It was weak and completely ineffectual,” Layton said. “Clearly, Mr. Prentice is not on the side of the ordinary Canadian who is wondering why these companies are being allowed to get away with gouging.”

Layton said the minister did some “huffing and puffing” but, ultimately, the Conservative government is failing to defend Canadian consumers.

One of Canada‘s other major cellphone providers, Rogers, has no plans to charge for incoming text messages.

© The Vancouver Province 2008