All Shows

Show of 5-4-2002

  • National ID Tag Update
  • Best Buy Suspends Use of Wireless Cash Registers
    • Current equipment uses 802.11b wireless connections
    • Manufacturer is Symbol Technologies for IBM POS system
    • Clear text transmission with no security safeguards
    • Hackers grabbed credit card numbers from parking lot
    • Best Buy responded quickly and pulled the plug May 1
    • System used by Home Deport, WalMart, and BestBuy
      • Home Depot uses wireless for price scans only (no credit card numbers)
      • WalMart information not available
  • Melissa Creator Sentenced to 20 months in jail
    • David L. Smith, creator of Melissa, sentenced to Federal prison
    • Sentence less than 5 years maximum because he had helped authorities find other virus creators.
    • Melissa was the 1999 Word Macro Worm that nearly shut down business
      • Rumored to be named after an Altanta hooker
      • Created virus in Aberdeen apartment and used a stolen AOL screen name and password to send it.
  • Microsoft Anti-trust Developments
  • Look to the Future of the Internet
    • This generation Internet links people
    • Next generation Internet will link things to things
      • In Singapore, cars talk to the street for adjustable rush hour tolls
      • In Tulsa products tell the store when they are bought
      • Exxon Mobile Speed Pass is another example
      • EZ Pass Toll Booths are another
      • In the future, TV dinners will give microwave cooking instructions
      • Help to find lost eye glasses. Tags work like radar
    • Privacy is the issue
    • WalMart, Gillette, Proctor& Gamble hve joined the Smart Tag movement
    • Auto-ID Center at MIT is driving the technology
    • Radio Frequency Identification Tag (RFID) are projected to cost 5 cents
  • Flexible foldable LCD screen will revolutionize computers
    • Developed by Royal Philips Electronics
    • Paint on raw materials onto any type of surface: walls, plastic, clothing
    • Called photo-enforced stratification involves painting a liquid crystal and polymer mixture onto a surface, then exposing to UV radiation twice
    • Radiation forces the mixture to separate tin a honeycomb of tiny individual cell covered by flexible, see-through polymer.
    • Process uses a mixture of four components (a liquid crystal, two monomers which can be photo-polymerized at different wavelengths of light, and a photo-initiator)
    • Article appears in May 2nd ?issue of Nature (requires free registration)
  • Upgrading to Windows XP Personal Experiences
    • Upgrade versus New Install
    • RAM requirements
    • Device Recognition
    • Hot Patches
    • Home Networking
    • ?Don?t forget about licensing discounts
  • Microsoft Backs AMDs 64-bit chip
    • Multiprocessor version of Hammer, called Opteron
    • MS Windows already runs on the 32-bit version
    • Will modify Windows to run on the 64-bit version due for release in 2003
    • SuSe Linux Distribution already supports the new chip
  • Robot Update
  • Hemmingway Goes Digital
    • 23 Heminway novels wil be available on the Web
    • Simon and Schuster has exclusive rights to the books
    • Agreed to sell them electronically for $9.99 each
  • Email
    • Mag strips on back of drivers licenses
    • AOL User Response to Rant Last Week
    • You can turn off pop-up ads
    • We love our service
    • Leave us alone
  • Is the AOL model obsolete?
    • AOL needs to transition from ISP to content provider
    • Can this transition be made
    • Still living in the X.25 age of a private network with some Internet access
  • Stratford News
    • Next start for Graduate and Undergraduate program is May 27