The Blog of Hans Eisenman

Cell Phone Use, Brain Cancer

Cell phone use, brain cancer...these are two words you don't really want to hear in the same sentence.

Here's my problem with this topic (see quote at end from Mercola.com, the popular health website).  On the one hand, it seems sensible enough that cell phone use could be causing a rise in brain tumors/cancer.  You get surgeons who are "reporting more cases of brain tumors/cancer than before", cell phone use is on the rise, peer-reviewed journals and all sorts of really credible sounding stuff.

However, there's one piece of information that doesn't seem to match up and I think it's an important one. 

If cell phones have been going up and up in use since, let's say 1992 or so (when I purchased my first cell phone-pictured above), shouldn't the rate of cancer be climbing as well, even if it's on a 10 year delay?  

Well, according to the Cancer Institute, it's dropping!

The Silver Lining Blog: The ethics of "stealing" a WiFi connection

Wow, accessing WiFI is now a crime?  Riiiiight.  Are we really, as a society, going to go down this road?  I mean if you can't legislate people into becoming good parents to their children (The Hill tries, but just do the math on what it would take to really make that work in terms of having enough enforcers around to ensure the law doesn't get broken), re-defining drive-by  WiFi usage as a criminal act isn't going to get anywhere either.

Wouldn't it just be easier to help people get what they need (providing it's not harming others, of course)? 

That's one of the things I love about the Silver Lining concept actually: everybody wins.  Users who, at the end of their probably long day, just want to get some time alone with the 'net, can get a connection for free.  (Well, almost.  The only thing they have to put up with is a small bar at the top showing a line of text/small graphic ads one at a time.)  Meanwhile, advertisers get their needs met with a little more targeted, user face-time.
It's another example of how the free-market could help heal societal woes (if the below really is one) provided lawmakers allow it to do so.  I'm sure there's some real criminality out there somewhere they could be focusing on.

Link: The Silver Lining Blog How Silver Lining Works.

Network security firm Sophos recently published a study on what it terms WiFi "piggybacking," or logging on to someone's open 802.11b/g/n network without their knowledge or permission. According to the company's study, which was carried out on behalf of The Times, 54 percent of the respondents have gone WiFi freeloading, or as Sophos put it, "admitted breaking the law [in the UK]."

Amazingly, accessing an unsecured, wide-open WiFi network without permission is illegal in some places, and not just in the UK.

IPhone Flaw Lets Hackers Take Over, Security Firm Says - New York Times

The real test of Apple's mettle in this situation isn't going to be whether or not bugs or holes like this are found on their new and innovative phones, but how efficiently the holes are effectively plugged.  Knowing Apple, they'll probably be able to push out a fix to all the existing iPhones (rather than making their owners jump through hoops by having to download files and install them).

One of the features I enjoy with my Treo 700p with Sprint is that I can dial *2 and if there is an update available for my phone service, it is detected automagically and downloaded to my phone right there.  That's the kind of low-hassle, hi-tech fix that can make a customer want to stay with a provider for a while (aka: create "stickiness").

If this is a real iPhone security issue, I'll be interested to see how what the average iPhone user has to do in order to fix it on their own iPhone. 

Link: IPhone Flaw Lets Hackers Take Over, Security Firm Says - New York Times.

A team of computer security consultants say they have found a flaw in Apple’s wildly popular iPhone that allows them to take control of the device.

The researchers, working for Independent Security Evaluators, a company that tests its clients’ computer security by hacking it, said that they could take control of iPhones through a WiFi connection or by tricking users into going to a Web site that contains malicious code. The hack, the first reported, allowed them to tap the wealth of personal information the phones contain.

Although Apple built considerable security measures into its device, said Charles A. Miller, the principal security analyst for the firm, “Once you did manage to find a hole, you were in complete control.” The firm, based in Baltimore, alerted Apple about the vulnerability this week and recommended a software patch that could solve the problem.

A spokeswoman for Apple, Lynn Fox, said, “Apple takes security very seriously and has a great track record of addressing potential vulnerabilities before they can affect users.”

iPhone Madness

 

Here I am at our local mall's Apple store thinking I might be able to get in and touch the new iPhone.  Ha!  And this photo you see isn't even the real line.  The rest of them are about 50 yards away, piling up behind a slightly bemused security guard. 

There is so much Geek Energy in the air, it is almost arcing off the overhead fixtures and gawking passersby. 

I don't remember seeing this much technological excitement since the first Star Wars movie release as a young boy!

Still, I think I will sit this early adopter round out and see how the reviews play out. 

Boing Boing: Vancouver cops hate WiFi

Okay this is a fairly disturbing viewpoint.  What concerns me way more than anything else here are the generalizations in this FBI statement.  It makes one feel as if people committing "nefarious acts" (another generalization) are far outnumbering honest WiFi users.  It's just not true.  And what exactly is a "nefarious act."  Are there zillions of people plotting the next JFK like assasination or are we just talking about the  average American's propensity for disagreeing with authority of all shapes and kinds?   Let's get some specifics here before we wantonly cast aspersions on one of the most enabling technologies to hit the face of Earth since Bell's telephone (or at least the cellular version of it).

Link: Boing Boing: Vancouver cops hate WiFi.

    Kevin R. West, a federal agent who oversees the computer crimes unit in North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation: "Free wireless spots are everywhere, and it makes it easy for people . . . to sit there and do their nefarious acts. The fear is that if we talk about it, people will learn about it and say, 'I can go to a parking lot, and no one will catch me.' But we need to talk about it so that we can figure out how to solve it."

Smart Mobs: Wi-Fi and rural areas of the U.S

Link: Smart Mobs: Wi-Fi and rural areas of the U.S.

"Technology advances, and public policy moves, have begun to stimulate the appearance of Wi-Fi in rural areas, and far-flung suburban areas, too,"this govtech.net article reports.

What we know

If there's one lesson we could learn from the Internet, the World Wide Web, the cellular phone phenomenon--not to mention the Short Messaging System (SMS), blogging, chat software, email group lists, and even just the Plain Old Telephone System (aka: POTS), it's that people want to communicate with one another.

It's actually quite hopeful.

Google, eBay And Amazon To AT&T: We'll Build Our Own Network

Hot news (or potential news anyway) if you're tired of the ankle-grabbing big telcos make us do relative to using their pipes for Internet connectivity.  I had heard Google was already buying up lots of "dark" fiber and pondered whether the endgame would be their own telco-free Internet network. 

Link: Networking Pipeline | Blog | Google, eBay And Amazon To AT&T: We'll Build Our Own Network.

Accessing The Internet From Almost Anywhere

A friend wrote in with this question about using his laptop to connect to the 'net from anywhere (like the way you'd use a cell phone).

I feel pretty duhh having just bought but not opened a netgear 108 Mbps Wireless PC card for one of my laptops.  I thought I could just plug it in and access the internet from wherever I was.  I haven’t opened the box yet, and looks like, from reading it, that I will have to be near my own network or computer to be able to access the internet. Is this true?  I was wanting to convert my laptop to a computer that would access the internet so I could write up loans in homes that I would be visiting.  A guy came into my office with his computer and accessed the net and I thought this would fix me up. Will it?  Or must I take it back and get something else?

Treo 700w

Treo moves away from Palm and over to the Windows operating system. 

I've got mixed emotions on this (not that I should be emotional, but let's face it, a product this good tends to incite irrational thinking, it's so cool).  On the one hand, Palm has been a very good operating system to me.  I've been a devoted Palm product user for the last 6-7 years at least, maybe longer (Palm III anyone?).

On the other hand, form really has to follow function and with every aspect of my business life revolving around the Windows OS, it's going to be hard to turn this development down on the basis of sheer loyalty.

Either way, the geek in me can't wait to hold this hot little product in my hands and tinker with it, regardless of "what's inside".

Link: Gear Factor, Palm 700w.