Technology

Latest news from the world of Technology.

When Summer Approaches, It’s Time to Consider the Perfect Green House

→ by David Porter on May 13th, 2013

Buildings Come in All Shades of Green

Buildings Come in All Shades of Green

After the long winter and a disappointing spring, MBF Blogs looks forward to a good summer with those of you minded to make your house more green or even build your own eco-viable dwelling, well catered for.

What would the perfect green house look like?

Green technology, while still evolving, now encompasses everything from materials developed through advanced technology, generating power to non-toxic cleaning products.

According to Green Technology the goals that inform development in this rapidly growing field include:

  • Sustainability – meeting the needs of society in ways that can continue indefinitely into the future without damaging or depleting natural resources. In short, meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
  • ‘Cradle to cradle design – ending the ‘cradle to grave’ cycle of manufactured products, by creating products that can be fully reclaimed or re-used.
  • Source reduction – reducing waste and pollution by changing patterns of production and consumption.
  • Innovation – developing alternatives to technologies – whether fossil fuel or chemical intensive agriculture – that have been demonstrated to damage health and the environment.
  • Viability – creating a centre of economic activity around technologies and products that benefit the environment, speeding their implementation and creating new careers that truly protect the planet.

Read more…

Broadband Infrastructure or Competition: What’s It All About?

→ by David Porter on May 7th, 2013

Broadband Is All About Fast Speed, Competition, Money and Innovation

Broadband Is All About Fast Speed, Competition, Money and Innovation For months in most of the non-metropolitan areas of Britain, stories have appeared in the media reporting the slowness (but steadiness) of the progress towards faster broadband.

For months in most of the non-metropolitan areas of Britain, stories have appeared in the media reporting the slowness (but steadiness) of the progress towards faster broadband.
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End of the Password Unlocks Whole New Minefield of Security Traps

→ by David Porter on March 31st, 2013

End of the Password Unlocks Whole New Minefield of Security Traps Speculation is mounting that Apple are just about to be doing away with the need for passwords to operate devices. It is suggested that a new iPhone will be operated by pressing a finger against the handset. Google Android are experimenting with voice recognition, iris scanners and behavioural biometrics to achieve the same thing. The way people swipe, tap keys or move their eyes and even heartbeats are unique to individuals. The same technology could not only unlock a phone or tablet, but open bank accounts, emails or anywhere that a password is demanded. Enough is Enough? The Fido Alliance (Fast Identity Online) is consortium of web firms dedicated to killing off the password. Techies all over are working hard to consign it to history. Poul-Henning Kamp, the man who invented the widely used password encryption tool MD5crypt, spoke to Rebecca Greenfield of The Atlantic Wire in June 2012 after major password hacks at financial institutions. He said that is creation is no longer safe. ‘I implore everybody to migrate to a stronger password scrambler without undue delay.’ He thought that all sites with more than 50,000 passwords to protect should come up with their own unique encryption algorithms. It’s safe to say that hasn’t happened everywhere. The Bane of Our Lives The password has become so complicated that many people are effectively excluded from technology. Apart from being a rather outdated security risk in themselves (people write most of them down somewhere or they are blindingly obvious to anybody who knows teh user, such as through social media. Computer programs to unlock passwords are commonplace. It is thought that the average person used thirteen different passwords on 50 sites, based on 2007 figures that suggested half those, given the way things grow exponentially on the net. With encouragement if not requirement to make passwords complex employing a range of symbols, lower/upper cases, no personal data and quite long, inevitably they will be hard to remember. People are also advised not to sue the same password twice, and some sites require regular updating. Plus, most sites also demand usernames/ID as well, and they may not be simply your name. Questions from your memorable data are usually easier to recall, but only if the spellings, gaps and punctuation are identical every time. Of course, no system is foolproof. The problems of scanners being fooled by photos, of too much background noise confusing voice recognition and even of criminals severing fingers from victims to get prints are legion and presumably are being tackled. The Era Has to End Last November, Tyler Falk wrote about the necessity for the password time to be terminated. He said those with 7-20 chracter passwords with plenty of numbers, symbols and uppercase rating ‘very strong’ smugly mock those who still use ‘password123’ as their key to the net. Both are equally at risk, he argued. He quoted Matt Honan, senior writer at Wired magazine who had long, robust alphanumeric passwords and saw his accounts all hacked with the loss of years of documents, photos because they were daisy-chained together. Honan and Falk are among those increasing numbers now terrified of ‘our password-centric web’. Storing information in the cloud has actually exacerbated the problem, Falk thought. Tricking into resetting passwords and using publicly available data from one service allows access to another. So what did he suggest? ‘The only way forward is real identity verification: to allow our movements and metrics to be tracked in all sorts of ways and to have those movements and metrics tied to our actual identity. We are not going to retreat from the cloud—to bring our photos and email back onto our hard drives. We live there now. So we need a system that makes use of what the cloud already knows: who we are and who we talk to, where we go and what we do there, what we own and what we look like, what we say and how we sound, and maybe even what we think.’ He acknowledged that would make privacy advocates very jumpy, as it ‘sounds creepy.’ But for him and many others, the alternative is ‘chaos and theft’. We have entrusted everything to a broken system, so we have to acknowledge that fact and then fix it! So, does it boil down to better security or better privacy? Also worth accessing: The Atlantic Wire, Rebecca Greenfield, How secret is my password? http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/06/end-password-we-know-it/53269/ June 2012 Smart Planet, Tyler Falk, The end of the password era, http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/the-end-of-the-password-era/5748 November 2012 When Campaigning for Web Freedom Gets Real, Dirty and Personal, 11 February 2013 http://blog.mailbigfile.com/hot-topics/when-campaigning-for-web-freedom-gets-real-dirty-and-personal/ Cyber Attack in the UK Set to Be the Biggest Growth Industry, 21 January 2013 http://blog.mailbigfile.com/hot-topics/cyber-attack-in-the-uk-set-to-be-the-biggest-growth-industry/ It’s the Season to Give Away Lots of Valuable Personal Data, 5 December 2012 http://blog.mailbigfile.com/hot-topics/its-the-season-to-give-away-lots-of-valuable-personal-data-while-shopping/ What If the Cloud Was a Country, How Green Would It Be?, 20 February 2013 http://blog.mailbigfile.com/hot-topics/what-if-the-cloud-was-a-country-how-green-would-it-be/ Could Computer Over-Reliance Be the Death of Us All? 30 July 2012 http://blog.mailbigfile.com/tech/could-computer-over-reliance-be-the-death-of-us-all/ Another Week, Another Systems Malfunction, 3 July 2012 http://blog.mailbigfile.com/social/another-week-another-systems-malfunction/ Scams Are Out to Get You, Online and Off, 21 May 2012 http://blog.mailbigfile.com/social/scams-get-online/ Image: Naomi IBUKI No Security Is Perfect on the Internet

No Security Is Perfect on the Internet
 

Speculation is mounting that Apple are just about to be doing away with the need for passwords to operate devices.

It is suggested that a new iPhone will be operated by pressing a finger against the handset. Google Android are experimenting with voice recognition, iris scanners and behavioural biometrics to achieve the same thing. The way people swipe, tap keys or move their eyes and even heartbeats are unique to individuals.

The same technology could not only unlock a phone or tablet, but open bank accounts, emails or anywhere that a password is demanded.
Read more…

Forward to the Past as Polaroids Make a Comeback

→ by David Porter on March 25th, 2013

The Polaroid Is to Make a Digital Return

The Polaroid Is to Make a Digital Return

News just out – wait for it all you over 30 years of age – the Polaroid is set to return next year!

No, the Polaroid is not some weird and wonderful Doctor Who-like hostile alien species, but an instant film camera, produced by the Polaroid Corporation of the USA founded in 1937 and they were the first makers of polarised sunglasses. The cameras were marketed from 1948 till 2008, when production ceased in favour of the new digital photography.

Older readers may recall that Polaroid defeated Kodak in a lengthy patent war in the mid 1980s, which led to Kodak leaving the instant camera market altogether in 1986.

Today, most people who recall Polaroids, even with affection, would have assumed they were safely dead and buried far longer than 2008, with just the odd specimen kept alive in technology museums. The paper to print photos has been unavailable too.
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Some Random Thoughts on How Glasses, Sticks and Minds Are Evolving

→ by David Porter on March 19th, 2013

What Will They Come Up With Next: Digital Sheep?

What Will They Come Up With Next: Digital Sheep?

Everything is becoming technical and soon everything, every single thing, will be changed.

Later this year the world is poised to welcome Google Glass, augmented reality spectacles, when they are launched publicly. They are being billed as ‘a new, more natural way of interacting with each other digitally.’

That means, presumably, that wearing a mini computer on your head, across your actual face, is ‘more natural’ than talking to somebody through a smartphone or computer. Real Google obsessives would say it’s even more ‘natural’ than talking to somebody in person!
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