I finally switched from PostNuke to Movable Type for my homepage/blog. I took many of the articles from my last CMS and put them here just to have them for the future. I’ll be adding my resume and other files soon. The biggest reason for switching is the ease of use and configuring the interface. I’ve been doing some tweaking and have it “close” to what I’d like for my web site. I’ve integrated my Gallery into the site relatively well (still tweaking the css file for it to make the sidebar format similarly to the sidebar on the rest of the pages). There’s more color work to go, but that’s very easy to change. My focus right now is putting all of the features I want into this site and tweaking things so that it’s easier to finish the fine detail work that is left.

I’ve installed a new Blog onto my server and am in the process of testing it out. This message is just a test to make sure everything is working correctly.

After taking an advanced, graduate level theory of operating systems class this past semester, computer security has been a new interest of mine. As I get time, I try to research and fine more information about technologies used currently to help secure computers. One of the most startling results was that one of the most widely used security algorithms isn’t as secure as believed.

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The past few weeks have been quite interesting in the world of high-technology companies. A few of the more prominent companies with interesting news include IBM and the Palm companies.

IBM
For starters, IBM sold it’s computer division to Chinese company Lenovo for a whopping $1.25 billion (which included approximately 20% stock in the company and $650 million cash). It was almost 20 years ago that they were the standard in the PC market; unfortunately poor business plans and changing computer technologies have caused them to slowly leave the manufacturing business. Less than 10 years ago, they started the downward trend by selling some of their foundries and hardware research locations, as well as some of their technologies (they sold some PowerPC rights last April to AMC and their storage controller technologies to LSI a few years back) in favor of just building the computers from other company’s parts and lower R and D bills. Since then, IBM has also been phasing in their new business model; offer services and software development. Lenovo, after sealing the deal with IBM, stated that it’s plans were to continue operations in the US and hire more workers between the NY and NC facilities. That’s a promising change that will hopefully help the US economy with it’s sluggish come-back. Sadly, however, this change also marks the end of the era of the rock-hard IBM ThinkPad notebook.

PalmSource
Palm’s promising Cobalt-based OS for their handhelds has been “on the horizon” for a few years now. The Cobalt OS allows for multiple threads of execution to happen very quickly, giving the user the idea that multiple programs are all running at once. From what I understand, the OS was slated for deployment in 2005 and is fully backwards-compatible with all Palms that run OS 5. That was the case up until a few days ago.
PalmSource announced that it’s Cobalt OS will be based on Linux with their proprietary GUI and functions built on top of the Linux layer. This news brings about all sorts of new promise for the OS. Through it is slated to support all past applications, new applications based on the Linux portion of the OS will be easier to write and use with the Palm OS. Another plus that is conceivable stems from the recent issues that Palm has had with it’s journal-based file system; Linux can be run with the FAT file system (which is native to flash memory chips) and doesn’t have the same limitations that journaling file systems have.
This new approach to the PalmOS also comes not long after PalmONE rumors went around that the Palm Treo line of phone/pdas may eventually run with embedded windows on them. Though the rumors were denied, it would be bad news for PalmSource if PalmONE went with another OS. A Linux-based OS from PalmSource would be a good way to protect themselves should PalmONE jump ship; many embedded processors are able to run some form of linux or another, which would make porting PalmOS to other portables (pdas, watches, etc…) a relatively simple thing to do.

Have you ever seen the movie “Minority Report?” In that movie, the futuristic society has retinal scanners to identify people when they enter and exit buildings and to keep track of where people are at just about any time of the day. Advertisements changed based on who is near them and what they have bought in the past and stores knew exactly what you bought on your last visit so that they could better serve you on future visits.

Thankfully, that society is a long way from being a reality, but it is slowly coming into form by taking small steps. The first of such steps is implanting chips into humans that link them to databases that store information about medical conditions and security clearance.

According to an article on WIRED’s online web site, the FDA recently approved the use of such implantable memory chips. One of the first proposed uses of the chip is to allow medical response teams to gain patient history to allow for faster treatment in an emergency. Using such chips would quickly allow responders to know past conditions that could potentially cause trouble or give a clue as to what happened to a person that isn’t able to communicate their condition on their own. Other uses for the chip include security tracking. A large number of Mexican officials were recently implanted with the chips to limit access to secure documents and locations.

Each chip has a unique ID number that links them to their information in a database. Since the chip doesn’t actually store any information about the patient, the issue of privacy is limited, but can still come up. What will happen when (I say “when”, because there will always be ways to misuse new technology) a smart engineer hacks his way into the devices to figure out a way to reverse-engineer the technology? That person could create scanners that read chips from anyone in their immediate vicinity or even clone the behavior of other chips to allow the user to pass through security.

As long as people continue to be creative, anything is possible. Hopefully, this new technology will be very closely monitored for legitimacy and accuracy by making sure that each chip is for only one person and that only that person can access the ID number. I don’t want to have to go into a police station in the future and find that someone cloned my chip and robbed a bank under my name and I also don’t want to have my vote for a candidate in a future election taken away because a group decided to rig the polls by cloning chips of other people and using them to vote for their candidate. Let’s hope that Orwell was wrong and our society doesn’t become the one in 1984.