Ok, I have to admit I don’t get too excited over mobile phones and devices; they just don’t trip my trigger. I mean I had my Palm Treo 650 for over two years before it finally gave up the ghost earlier this summer. I had an HTC Hermes for a while, and I have a couple of Blackberry’s (I use to support my end users here). A phone is a phone, can I place and receive calls reliably (and in most cases every carrier has its set of warts)? I didn’t go ga-ga over the iPhone, I mean come on, standing in line overnight for a cell phone that I get the privilege of paying a premium for on BOTH the hardware AND service?
Soooo, I wouldn’t exactly call myself an early adopter, I’m more in to foundations, reliability, security and flexibility (try supporting nearly 600 people with a staff of 6 and you’ll know what I mean).
So when I got my hands on this HTC Kaiser (branded the AT&T Tilt), I was, at best, skeptical, and it was announced in March of this year. But this thing is really cool, it’s actually a bit heavier than the Hermes, but a bit thinner too, it uses Windows Mobile 6 with the TouchFlo technology allowing much easier one-handed operation of the handheld. The wireless data is HSPDA (AT&T’s 3G) in most metro areas. But the one feature that really sent me over the edge was the on-board GPS. After I loaded Windows Live Search Mobile, I had real-time mapping and turn-by-turn navigation on my mobile phone, since it’s connected to AT&T’s network, and this is the cool part, I got the name of a restaurant from a friend, used live search to find the phone number, called the place, and got the address and location with real-time GPS directions all on my MOBILE PHONE!
I can now use this handheld to do some basic but remote support of my servers back at the office; I added Microsoft’s voice command for hands-free dialing.
All of this including my standard calendar/email/phone/voice-mail/messaging applications, and for the first time I feel the realization of the promise of a personal digital assistant made by the Apple Newton in the early 1990’s.
Of course it’s not perfect, even with the improved processor it’s still sluggish in some functions. But this is a tremendous leap ahead of anything I’ve had up to this point.
Read more about the Kaiser/Tilt in the referenced Engadget article.
I sat down after dinner tonight to begin studying for a data analysis assignment I had been putting off when I noticed a story that caught my eye on the new PBS series “WIRED Science.”
The story titled “World War 2.0” talked about the recent botnet attacks by Russian loyalists on the country of Estonia. It seems that after the end of World War II the Soviets drove the Germans out of the country. Now in the 21st century, Estonia is a member of the EU and NATO. In an attempt, Josh Davis, the story’s author points out, to distance themselves from their Soviet past, many ethnic Russians were none too happy about the idea, and took to the streets.
It’s here that the story gets interesting, see some of these ethnic Russians are also consummate computer hackers, and when physical riots didn’t produce the desired effect, they took to cyberspace. Through the use of several botnets, these hackers created an astounding display of cyber-warfare or cyber-terrorism, by launching a large scale distributed denial of service attack at the several high profile targets including the largest bank in Estonia, Hansapank, and one of the leading newspapers Postimees. The affects were devastating, people were cut off from the bank for days, and the country had effectively garrisoned itself from the rest of the wire world. No news, no information, was allowed in or out.
So here’s the point, and a warning; launching an attack like the one that hit Estonia would have little effect on the resources of the United States. But proportionately sized, not out of the question by the way, would cripple the information infrastructure of this country. Now all of a sudden, who needs nukes? Distributed computing, some ingenuity, and a political agenda are all that’s needed to cripple a businesses, county, city, or state agency. And if you think these activities are being executed by pimple faced teenagers with a grudge and a notebook, think again. Several countries in the far east and pacific rim have state sponsored cyber-warfare programs with the specific agenda of disabling national and private infrastructure, it is far more profitable, decimating an economy, without all the… well, dead bodies.
I’ve been a listener of Security Now! since Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte since its beginning in August of 2005. I’ve never really been the type of person to "testify" to anyone else, but I do find myself saying frequently saying "let me tell you what my last week has been like."
Such is the case for Security Now! I find myself using it as an ongoing resource for both my graduate studies, and as a resource for my work. Steve Gibson has a way of presenting ver complicated issues in information security in very approachable ways.
It seems to me that I find myself going back repeatedly to refer and catch up on material I’ve missed. I recommend Security Now and all of the TWiT (www.twit.tv) netcasts if you’re involved in technology at any level.
I’ve just been listening to episode 81 of Security Now, yeah I know I’m behind. Anyway the subject is about a paper published by Google on the long term reliability of disk drives.
It turns out, the single device that we depend on the most at home and in the enterprise isn’t so reliable. It’s quite enlightening, and a little bit frightening.
You can read/hear about it at: www.grc.com/securitynow.
